WHAT  THE  WORLD 
OWES  LUTHER 

JUNIUS  E  REMEMSNYDER 


BR  325  .R4  1917 
Remensnyder ,  Junius 

Benjamin,  1843-1927. 
What  the  world  owes  Luther 


What  the  World  Owes  Luther 


What  the  World 
Owes  Luther 


<>        u- 
\ 

A  J 


By       ■ 
JUNIUS  B.  REMENSNYDER,  D.D.,  LL.D. 


DJ 


New    York  Chicago  Toronto 

Fleming     H.    Revell    Company 

London  and  Edinburgh 


Copyright,  19 1 7,  by 
FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 


Printed  in  tie  United  States  of  America 


New  York:  158  Fifth  Avenue 
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Edinburgh:      100    Princes    Street 


Contents 

I. 

Luther's  Early  Years 

1 

II. 

Luther  the  Man         .        .        . 

12 

III. 

Luther  Begins  the  Reformation 

19 

IV. 

Luther's  Unique  Personality    . 

30 

V. 

Author    of    Civil    and    Religious 
Liberty         

40 

VI. 

The  Mysticism  of  Luther  . 

.      44 

VIL 

Luther  and  the  Fine  Arts 

.      51 

VIII. 

Luther  and  War 

.      55 

IX. 

Luther  and  the  Home 

»      59 

X. 

Luther's  Faults 

.      62 

XL 

What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

.      73 

XII. 

America's  Debt  to  Luther 

.      ^7 

XIII. 

The  Hero  of  Universal  Protestant- 
ism 

.      91 

XIV. 

Luther's  Growing  Fame     , 

.      93 

"  Great  men  are  the  fire-pillars  in  this  dark 
pilgrimage  of  mankind ;  they  stand  as  heavenly 
signs,  everlasting  witnesses  of  what  has  leen, 
prophetic  tokens  of  what  may  still  he,  the  re- 
vealed embodied  possibilities  of  human  nature.^' 

— Thomas  Oarlyle. 


I 

LUTHER'S  EARLY  YEARS 

ON  the  night  of  the  tenth  of  November, 
1483,  more  than  four  centuries  ago,  in  the 
quaint  little  German  town  of  Eisleben, 
Luther,  the  monk  who  shook  the  world,  was  born. 

A  century  before,  the  martyr  Hus  prophesied 
that  from  his  ashes  in  a  hundred  years  another 
swan—the  meaning  of  Hus  in  the  Bohemian 
tongue— would  arise  who  could  not  be  destroyed. 
As  Luther's  family  coat  of  arms  was  a  swan,  many 
historians  have  seen  in  his  birth  a  fulfillment  of 
the  dying  martyr's  prophecy. 

Whether  such  strange  coincidences  are  mere  ac- 
cidents, or  whether  they  are  links  in  that  chain  of 
mystic  agency  which  circumvents  the  realities  of 
life,  one  can  never  know.  But  certainly  the  gaze 
of  the  supernatural  world  could  not  have  been 
closed  to  what  then  and  there  transpired.  Says 
Thomas  Carlyle :  "  In  the  world  that  day,  there 
was  not  a  more  entirely  unimportant  looking  pair 
of  people  than  this  miner  and  his  wife.  And  yet 
what  were  all  emperors,  popes  and  potentates  in 
comparison?  There  was  born  here  once  more  a 
mighty  man,  whose  light  was  to  flame  as  the 
beacon  over  long  centuries  and  epochs  of  the  world. 

7 


8  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

History  was  waiting  for  this  man.  It  is  strange. 
It  is  great.  It  leads  us  back  to  another  birth  hour, 
in  a  still  meaner  environment,  1,900  years  ago,  of 
which  it  is  fit  that  we  say  nothing ;  that  we  think 
only  in  silence — for  what  words  are  there !  The 
age  of  miracles  past !  The  age  of  miracles  is  for- 
ever here." 

The  talents  early  evinced  by  Luther  made  his 
father— a  man  of  strong  character,— and  his  mother, 
— a  woman  beloved  for  her  rare  feminine  graces — 
resolve  to  give  him  a  thorough  education.  So,  in  his 
fifteenth  year  they  sent  him  to  the  flourishing  school 
at  Eisenach.  Here,  he  was  so  pressed  by  poverty 
that  he  had  to  beg  his  bread.  A  wealthy  lady, 
Ursula  Cotta,  who  had  often  been  struck  by  the  rare 
sweetness  of  Luther's  voice  in  the  church  choir,  one 
Christmas  Eve  when  he  was  singing  a  carol  at  her 
door  for  bread,  called  him  in  and  made  him  an  in- 
mate of  her  family.  Here  he  enjoyed  all  the  refining 
influences  of  a  cultured  home.  Luther  never  for- 
got this  kindness.  Years  after,  at  the  height  of 
his  fame,  similarly  receiving  her  son  into  his  house- 
hold, and  making  the  significant  remark  when  he 
recurred  to  the  incident:  "There  is  nothing 
sweeter  than  the  heart  of  a  pious  woman." 

LUTHER  AT  THE  UNIVERSITY 

Thence,  Luther  went  to  the  University  of  Er- 
furth,  the  most  renowned  in  Germany.  Here, 
while  one  day  in  the  library,  he  found  a  copy  of 
the  Bible— a  book  he  had  never  seen,  only  hearing 


Luther's  Early  Years  9 

the  Scripture  lessons  read  by  the  priests.  A  strik- 
ing commentary  on  the  state  of  Christendom  at  that 
time,  when  a  highly  educated  student  had  not  seen 
that  holy  volume  which  now  even  the  simple  and 
wayfaring  have  in  their  hands !  Luther  eagerly 
opens  the  Bible,  and,  as  he  reads,  a  new  light 
dawns  in  his  eyes,  and  a  new  thrill  wakes  his  inner 
life ! 

Says  the  historian  D'Aubigne  of  Luther  as  a 
student :  "  His  powerful  intellect,  the  glow  of  his 
imagination,  and  his  remarkable  memory,  soon 
gave  him  the  start  of  all  his  fellow  students. 
He  was  especially  gifted  in  the  dead  languages,  in 
rhetoric  and  in  poetry :  cheerful,  obliging,  sociable 
and  good-hearted,  he  was  beloved  by  his  teach- 
ers and  companions."  Wrote  Melancthon  :  "  The 
whole  university  admired  his  genius." 

But  just  when,  with  great  pomp  and  a  splendid 
procession,  he  had  been  created  master  of  arts  and 
doctor  of  philosophy  and  the  most  brilliant  future 
invited  him,  he  one  night  summoned  his  friends  to 
a  repast.  Music,  pleasure  and  gayety  ruled  the 
hour,  but  at  their  very  height,  Luther  stepped  into 
the  midst  of  the  company  and  announced  his  re- 
solve to  become  a  monk.  And,  having  bidden  this 
public  farewell  to  the  world,  that  very  night  he 
hastened  to  a  cloister,  and  as  its  doors  closed  upon 
him,  the  world  with  its  prizes  was  renounced  for- 
ever. Luther's  companions  were  stupefied.  His 
father,  whose  hopes  were  dashed  to  the  ground, 
disowned  him,  but  all  protest  failed  to  move  him. 


lo  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

The  secret  of  this  extraordinary  step  was  that  the 
finding  of  the  Bible  had  brought  Luther  face  to 
face  with  that  question,  which  to  all  imperial 
natures  must  ever  be  the  most  stupendous  in  time 
— the  everlasting  welfare  of  his  soul.  Nothing  is  a 
surer  indication  of  a  weak  and  frivolous  mind  than 
for  one  never  in  fear  and  trembling  to  say  to  his 
deepest  self :  "  What  must  I  do  to  be  saved  ?  " 

We  now  see  Luther  as  a  monk,  seeking  the  way 
of  life  in  a  monastery.  He  was  most  assiduous 
in  fastings,  penances  and  ascetical  practices.  He 
writes  :  *'  So  strictly  did  I  observe  the  duties  of  the 
order,  that  if  ever  any  monk  has  entered  heaven  by 
way  of  a  monastery,  then  would  I  have.  I  tor- 
mented myself  to  death  to  procure  for  my  troubled 
heart  and  agitated  conscience  peace  before  God,  but 
encompassed  with  thick  darkness,  I  nowhere  found 
peace."  Such  was  the  sharpness  of  his  soul-strug- 
gles that  sometimes  he  remained  solitary  in  his  cell 
for  days  without  food.  Several  times  he  fell  faint- 
ing on  the  floor,  and  his  fellow  monks  feared  he 
would  die.  But  at  last,  when  he  found  all  these 
methods  worse  than  useless,  he  was  led  to  the  dis- 
covery that  man  is  justified,  not  by  penances  and 
self-lacerations,  but  by  faith  in  the  mercy  of  God 
and  forgiveness  of  sins  through  the  atoning  blood 
of  Christ.  When  this  sunburst  broke  upon  his  soul, 
he  tells  us  in  the  poetical  exuberance  of  his  newly- 
found  faith  that  all  those  passages  of  Scripture  that 
once  alarmed  him,  seemed  now  to  "  run  to  him  from 
all  sides,  to  smile,  to  spring  up,  to  dance  and  play 


Luther's  Early  Years  1 1 

around  him."  Luther  thus  had  regained  the  lost 
cardinal  truth — the  very  heart  of  the  Gospel — justi- 
fication by  faith  alone.  He  now  holds  in  his  hand 
the  key  of  the  lost  paradise.  And  all  unconsciously 
he  goes  forth  from  his  closet  to  give  this  soul-free- 
dom to  the  world. 

It  was  this  strength  and  joyousness  given  from 
getting  at  the  inner  meaning  of  Scripture,  which 
gave  such  heartiness  and  assurance  to  Luther 
in  the  many  trying  periods  of  his  life.  The  Scrip- 
tures revealed  to  him  God  as  Lord,  and  God  as  a 
Father,  comforting,  guiding  and  walking  with  His 
children.  And  it  was  this  joyous  confidence  of  the 
Christian  life  that  so  commended  it  to  those  who 
only  knew  the  austerity  and  fearsomeness  of  the 
Komanistic  conception  of  Christianity.  Hence 
those  who  once  experienced  the  power  and  bless- 
edness of  the  Gospel  as  revealed  by  Luther,  felt 
that  he  had  restored  to  them  a  lost  treasure  greater 
than  all  worldly  riches. 


n 

LUTHEE,  THE  MAN 

AN  eye-witness  and  hearer  gives  us  a  pen 
portrait  of  his  personal  appearance.  Re 
was  of  medium  stature,  handsomely  pro- 
portioned. His  features  were  regular,  softened 
with  refined  feeling.  He  had  remarkable  eyes, 
large  and  deep,  dark  and  brilliant,  with  an  amber 
circle  around  the  pupil,  which  made  them  seem  to 
emit  fire  when  under  excitement.  His  hair  was 
dark  and  waving.  His  mouth  was  elegantly  formed, 
expressive  of  determination,  tenderness  and  humour. 
Though  strongly  built,  he  was  generally  spare  and 
wasted  from  hard  labours,  incessant  studies  and  an 
abstemious  life.  His  countenance  was  brave  and 
open,  and  his  attitude  in  speaking  manly  and  bold. 
He  stood  remarkably  firm  on  his  feet;  his  form 
bent  rather  backward  than  forward;  his  face 
thrown  up  and  flashing  like  a  lion. 

Mosellan,  professor  at  Leipsic  University,  gives 
this  pen  portrait  of  Luther,  at  the  age  of  thirty-five, 
in  his  famous  discussion  with  the  Eoman  Catholic 
Dr.  Eck  at  Leipsic :  "  Martin  is  of  medium  height 
and  slender  form,  with  a  body  so  wasted  both  with 
cares  and  study  that  you  can  almost  count  his  bones. 
He  is  just  in  the  prime  of  life  with  a  clear  and  pene- 

12 


Luther,  the  Man  13 

trating  voice.  His  learning  is  wonderful,  and  he 
has  everything  at  command.  He  has  a  great  forest 
of  ideas  and  of  words.  In  his  manner  he  is  polite 
and  affable,  not  in  the  least  stoical  or  supercilious, 
and  he  is  able  to  adapt  himself  to  all  occasions.  In 
company,  he  is  a  gay  and  merry  jester,  alert  and 
good  humoured,  everywhere  with  a  bright  and 
cheerful  face,  however  terribly  his  enemies  threaten 
him." 

"  He  kept  three  printing-presses  going  and  yet 
they  could  not  keep  up  with  his  pen.  His  light- 
ning speed  was  the  despair  of  friends  and  foes 
alike.  Wonderful  that  so  hastily  done,  his  writ- 
ings should  so  richly  repay  reading  after  the  lapse 
of  four  centuries.  The  physical  and  mental  vitality 
of  the  man  was  one  of  the  most  amazing  things 
about  him,  and  one  of  the  secrets  of  his  tremendous 
power." ' 

LUTHER  THE  PREACHER 

Luther  was  a  great  preacher.  A  man  of  the  people, 
his  heart  aglow  \yith  human  sympathy,  the  pulpit 
was  his  natural  sphere.  Such  a  fire  did  his  elo- 
quence kindle  in  the  wooden  Wittenberg  Chapel, 
where  he  first  began  to  preach,  that  a  contemporary 
says  that  it  was  not  unaptly  to  be  compared  to  the 
stable  in  which  Christ  was  born.  His  power  over 
an  audience  was  magnetic.  Whenever  he  was  to 
preach,  crowds  flocked  to  hear  him,  and  sometimes 
he  held  25,000  auditors  stilled  and  awed  by  the  spell 

*  Professor  McGifEert's  "Life  of  Luther." 


14  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

of  his  oratory.  Says  Fish  in  his  "  Masterpieces  of 
Eloquence  "  :  "  It  cannot  be  denied  that,  for  about 
thirty  years,  Luther  was  the  greatest  pulpit  orator 
living."  Bossuet,  the  great  Koman  Catholic  writer, 
a  bitter  foe  of  Protestantism,  testified :  "  Luther 
had  a  strength  of  genius,  a  vehemence  in  his  dis- 
courses, a  living  and  impetuous  eloquence,  which 
entranced  and  ravished  the  people."  And  Calvin, 
the  great  reformer,  pays  him  this  eulogy :  "  Luther 
is  the  trumpet,  or  rather  he  is  the  thunder,  he  is 
the  lightning  which  has  roused  the  world  from  its 
lethargy.  It  is  not  so  much  Luther  who  speaks  as 
God,  whose  lightnings  burst  from  his  lips."  His 
voice  was  sonorous  and  far-reaching ;  his  action  ve- 
hement and  passionate,  and  when,  reaching  his 
climax,  he  bore  down  with  the  full  torrent  of  his 
oratory,  the  effect  upon  the  audience  was  irresist- 
ible. The  love  of  God,  sin,  faith  in  the  Crucified, 
and  the  need  of  a  holy  inner  life,  were  the  themes 
rushing  in  burning  accents  from  his  lips  and  setting 
the  souls  of  his  hearers  aflame.  His  strict  Bible 
themes,  and  reverent  and  devout  manner,  scathingly 
rebuke  the  modern  sensational  preacher,  and  the 
irreverent  evangelist,  while  the  indescribable  re- 
sults produced  show  that  the  Gospel  need  not  be 
secularized  and  scandalized  to  gain  for  it  a  popular 
hearing. 

LUTHER  A  LEADER  OF  MEN 

Luther   had  by  nature  a  remarkable  gift  for 
leadership.     He  was  endowed  with  a  strong  will' 


Luther,  the  Man  15 

2>ower.  When  convinced  that  he  had  grasped  a 
truth,  and  that  his  stand  was  right,  nothing  human 
or  superhuman  could  make  him  swerve.  And  he 
had  that  unique  quality,  that  he  could  head  a 
movement,  utterly  regardless  of  whether  a  single 
one  would  follow  him.  His  balance  of  judgment, 
too,  was  so  wise  and  far~visioned  that  electors, 
princes  and  kings  came  to  him  for  counsel,  and  de- 
ferred to  his  decision.  He  was  not  alone  the  relig- 
ious leader,  but  the  master  of  diplomacy  of  his  time. 
This  gave  him  such  a  supreme  authority  for  thirty 
years  as  no  person  has  ever  attained  in  any  age. 
"He  bestrode  Europe  like  a  Colossus,"  writes  a 
historian. 

Scholars,  critics,  philosophers,  moralists,  and  po- 
etic geniuses  may  exert  wide  influence,  but  are  quite 
inadequate  to  the  creation  of  a  new  order  of  things. 
This  can  be  achieved  alone  by  a  calm  and  resolute 
will,  which  has  the  courage,  confidence  and  endur- 
ance to  take  up  the  fight  against  an  existing  world- 
order,  and  continue  the  struggle  until  it  is  over- 
thrown. The  possession  of  this  heroic  will,  this 
"  most  rare  and  most  mighty  of  the  creative  forces 
of  history  "  was  the  marked  endowment  of  Luther. 
And  it  was  just  this  masterful  will  that  gave  men 
confidence  and  induced  them  to  follow  him.  In 
this  forcefulness  lay  the  secret  of  his  success.  He 
was  born  for  leadership.  And  though  earth,  sea, 
and  air  were  peopled  with  opposing  devils,  his 
clarion  call  bore  the  hosts  of  righteousness  on  to 
victory. 


l6  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

LUTHER,  STUDENT  AND  SCHOLAR 

Luther,  moreover,  was  a  brilliant  student,  scholar 
and  writer.  For  these  extraordinary  talents  he  was 
appointed  at  the  age  of  twenty -five  professor  in 
the  newly  founded  university  at  Wittenberg.  At 
twenty-seven,  seven  monasteries  elected  him  to 
bear  an  embassy  to  the  Pope  at  Eome.  At  twenty- 
eight  he  was  made  doctor  of  theology.  And  so  fa- 
mous soon  became  his  lectures,  that  students,  and 
even  professors,  flocked  from  all  parts  of  Germany 
to  hear  him,  and  Wittenberg  became  the  foremost 
university  in  that  land  of  scholars  and  universities. 

Full  well,  too,  he  knew  the  "  terrible  toil  "  req- 
uisite for  thorough  scholarship.  He  thus  became 
skilled  in  the  learned  languages,  he  was  a  patient 
student  of  history,  he  delighted  in  the  schools  of 
the  philosophers,  he  was  a  profound  theologian, 
he  was  versed  in  the  sciences,  and  his  retentive 
memory  made  these  vast  stores  ready  for  use.  So 
his  pen  was  indeed  mightier  than  the  sword.  He 
was  a  clear  and  trenchant  writer ;  his  illustrations 
were  lively,  his  humour  keen,  and  he  knew  well  how 
to  drive  to  the  mark.  So  pungent  and  telling  were 
his  thoughts  that  Melancthon  called  them  "  thunder- 
bolts." "His  words  are  half  battles,"  said  Jean 
Paul  Kichter.  Scholars  and  the  plain  people  were 
equally  moved  by  them.  Erasmus,  the  first  scholar 
of  that  day,  wrote :  "  I  learn  more  from  one  page 
of  Luther  than  from  all  the  works  of  Thomas 
Aquinas."  And  plain  John  Bunyan  attests  of  his 
Commentary  on  Galatians;     "Of  all  the  books  I 


Luther,  the  Man  17 

ever  met,  I  found  it  the  most  fit  for  a  wounded 
conscience." 

The  versatility  of  Luther's  pen  seems  almost 
incredible.  Translations,  commentaries,  doctrinal 
treatises,  confessions  of  faith,  popular  tracts  and 
circular  letters  followed  each  other  with  unparal- 
lelled  rapidity.  With  all  these,  he  found  time  to 
publish  a  liturgy  for  public  worship,  orders  for 
baptism  and  the  Lord's  supper,  and  a  Catechism  for 
youth,  which  at  once  became  an  incomparable 
classic,  circulated  in  more  languages  than  any  un-; 
inspired  volume.  He  also  published  a  Germari 
hymn-book,  of  which  the  poet  Coleridge  says: 
"  Luther  did  as  much  for  the  Keformation  by  his 
hymns  as  by  the  translation  of  the  Bible ;  the 
children  learned  them  in  the  cottage,  and  martyrs 
sang  them  on  the  scaffold."  The  most  notable  of 
these  is  that  battle  song  of  the  Keformation,  "  Ein 
Teste  Burg  ist  Unser  Gott,"  of  which  Dr.  Schaff 
says :  "  It  is  the  great  Marseillaise  of  Protestantism 
— its  words  and  notes  thrill  on  the  heart  like  bugle 
blasts  from  heaven."  Luther's  publications,  from 
massive  volumes  to  pamphlets,  number  upwards  of 
two  thousand, — an  average  of  over  one  a  week  for 
his  working  life — an  amazing  proof  of  the  power 
resident  in  a  single  soul.  The  style  in  these  inces- 
sant writings  vividly  reflected  the  many-sidedness 
of  Luther's  mind.  There  is  no  art  or  resource  in 
the  whole  range  of  letters  which  his  pen  does  not 
bring  under  tribute  to  overwhelm  his  papal  op- 
ponents.   His  style  is  now  like  "  the  gleaming  of 


i8  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

swords,  now  galling  with  irony  like  the  bite  of  an 
adder,  now  winning  like  the  rustle  and  glance  of 
jewelled  garments,  now  terrible  as  the  lightning, 
now  tender  as  the  dew,  now  sparkling  with  his 
native  humour,  now  close,  rapid  in  argument  as  the 
tread  of  armed  men,  now  wildly  and  grandly 
reverent  as  the  voice  of  forests,  or  the  solemn  roar 
of  the  sea."  Disseminated  by  the  just  invented 
printing-press,  Luther's  writings  flew  world-wide 
and  their  influence  smote  all  hearts.  They  have 
been  translated  in  every  modern  tongue,  and  to-day, 
by  them,  the  Eef ormer's  thoughts  are  still  reaching 
millions  of  readers. 


ni 

LUTHER  BEGINS  THE  EEFORMATION 

WE  now  find  this  modest,  brave  monk  on 
the  eve  of  beginning  the  Reformation — 
the  most  epochal  work  since  the  birth 
of  Christianity.  Luther's  talents  and  piety  moved 
the  elector  Frederick  to  appoint  him  professor  in 
the  newly-founded  University  of  Wittenberg.  The 
Pope,  in  urgent  need  of  money  to  complete  the 
great  cathedral  of  St.  Peter  at  Rome,  commissioned 
one  Tetzel  to  sell  indulgences  for  sin.  He  came  to 
Juterback,  four  miles  from  Wittenberg,  and  pro- 
claimed with  brazen  effrontery  :  "  There  is  no  sin 
so  great  that  the  indulgence  cannot  remit  it.  The 
instant  the  money  clinks  in  the  chest,  the  soul  escapes 
from  purgatory  to  heaven."  Luther's  heart  bled  for 
the  poor,  misguided  people,  and  having  drawn  up 
ninety-five  theses  on  true  evangelical  repentance  and 
faith,  and  not  papal  indulgences,  as  the  sole  means 
of  forgiveness  of  sins,  all  alone,  he  nailed  them  up 
on  the  castle  church  door  on  the  eve  of  All  Saints' 
Day,  the  thirty-first  of  October,  1517.  Luther  drives 
the  last  nail  and  retires  to  his  cell,  little  dreaming 
that  the  blows  of  that  hammer  were  to  arouse  the 
slumbering  middle  ages,  to  cross  oceans  and  con- 
tinents, and  to  resound  through  all  coming  time  ! 
When  the  gathered  crowds  read  the  theses  next 
19 


20  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

day,  a  great  tumult  spread  throughout  the  city. 
But  it  was  only  the  prelude  to  a  far  mightier  com- 
motion. "  Within  a  month,"  says  a  historian  of 
that  day, "  they  had  spread  through  all  Christendom 
as  if  the  angels  of  God  had  been  their  messengers." 
From  this  act  and  time,  history  justly  dates  the 
beginning  of  the  Keformation.  The  universal  furore 
these  theses  caused  showed  that  men  had  long 
dimly  felt  these  truths,  and  that  at  last  they  had 
found  a  thinker  and  leader  bold  enough  to  express 
and  champion  them.  Luther  kept  the  movement 
advancing  by  public  disputations,  controversial 
tracts  and  stirring  addresses  to  the  nobility  and 
people,  until  all  Europe  was  in  a  ferment,  and  the 
alarmed  Pope  issued  a  bull  excommunicating  him. 
Whereupon  Luther  took  a  step  that  showed  the 
papal  hierarchy  the  mettle  of  the  man  with  whom 
they  had  now  come  to  deal,  and  at  whose  bold- 
ness the  world  trembled.  He  publicly  burned 
the  bull  and  papal  decretals.  This  was  on  De- 
cember 10,  1520.  As  the  flames  kindled,  a  great 
shout  burst  from  the  bystanders.  It  was  "  the  shout 
of  the  awakening  of  nations."  The  Pope  now  saw 
that  this  daring  rebel  must  be  crushed,  or  that  his 
ancient  sceptre  would  fall. 

THE  DIET  AT  WOEMS 

Accordingly  in  April,  1621,  the  Diet  of  Worms 
was  called  to  consider  the  religious  ferment.  It 
was  an  Ecumenical  council,  which,  according  to  the 
traditional  theory,  expressed  the  infallible  decree 


Luther  Begins  the  Reformation  21 

of  the  Church.  This  was  to  be  an  epoch-making 
council.  From  it  history  has  dated  the  beginning  of 
the  Reformation.  The  cleavage  there  made  in  the 
ancient  unity  and  authority  of  the  historic  Church 
of  Christ  has  grown  and  widened  ever  since.  From 
that  era  Christianity  has  been  divided  into  two 
great  streams,  Roman  and  Protestant.  This  leads 
us  to  consider  the  two  chief  actors  in  the  scene. 

LUTHER  AND   CHARLES,  THE  GREAT 
(A  Dramatic  Episode) 

The  two  leaders  most  conspicuous  on  the  stage 
in  the  Reformation,  and  who  most  held  in  their 
hands  future  human  destinies,  were,  on  the  religious 
side,  Luther,  and  on  the  political,  Charles  Y.  Both 
were  personalities  of  commanding  character  and 
interest.  Both  were  deeply  conscientious,  and  as- 
sured of  the  rightfulness  of  their  cause,  and  both 
were  locked  in  a  lifelong  struggle. 

Charles,  when  only  in  his  twentieth  year,  had 
succeeded  to  the  throne  of  the  greatest  empire  in 
the  world.  His  titular  dignity  was  that  of  Em- 
peror of  Rome,  Germany  and  Spain.  He  thus 
held  under  his  sway  the  most  powerful  and  fairest 
countries  of  Europe. 

His  coronation  had  taken  place  in  1520  at  Aix- 
la-Chapelle,  where,  amid  ceremonies  of  gorgeous 
splendour,  the  golden  diadem  of  Charlemagne  had 
been  placed  upon  his  head,  and  girt  with  his  sword, 
he  was  proclaimed  Roman  emperor. 

Charles  was  by  nature  of   very  different  fibre 


22  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

from  most  princes.  He  had  a  noble  air  and  re- 
fined manners.  He  was  earnest,  serious,  given  to 
thought  and  study.  He  was  cautious  of  his  words, 
firm  of  purpose,  slow  to  decide,  gifted  with  a  cool 
judgment,  always  master  of  himself,  and  had  that 
rare  quality  of  greatness,  a  disposition  to  be  tol- 
erant to  his  opponents. 

The  papal  legate  wrote  from  Worms  to  Pope 
Leo  of  him :  "  They  may  say  what  they  please, 
but  it  seems  to  me  that  this  young  prince  is  gifted 
with  good  sense  and  judgment  far  beyond  his 
years,  and  he  has,  I  believe,  much  more  in  his 
head  than  appears  on  his  face." 

Charles  was  naturally  very  religious :  a  devoted 
believer  in  the  Komanish  Church,  and  a  hearty 
defender  of  the  traditional  faith  of  Christendom. 
This  fact — one  not  often  taken  into  account — that 
the  imperial  head  of  Europe  and  the  champion  of 
the  Koman  Catholic  party  was  so  pious,  temper- 
ate and  wise, — immensely  strengthened  the  cause 
of  mediaevalism,  and  made  the  task  which  de- 
volved upon  Luther  incalculably  more  difficult. 

Scarcely  had  this  emperor  come  to  the  throne 
when  he  was  confronted  by  a  problem  of  the  gra- 
vest character.  An  obscure  monk,  one  Martin  Lu- 
ther, had  dared  to  call  the  Church  to  answer  for 
her  errors  as  to  the  true  Christian  faith,  and  for 
encouraging  the  prevalence  of  corruptions  danger- 
ous to  the  souls  of  men,  and  causing  oppressive 
social  conditions.  It  was  sought  to  quiet  him, 
but  the  most  imposing  exhibitions  of  authority 


Luther  Begins  the  Reformation  23 

had  failed.  Threats,  anathemas,  bulls  of  excom- 
munication— all  had  been  in  vain.  The  Church 
began  to  realize  that  the  monk  of  Wittenberg  was 
no  ordinary  personality,  and  that  to  suppress  his 
movement  and  himself,  measures  of  utmost  deci- 
sion must  be  resorted  to.  And  so  an  Ecumenical 
council  was  called  to  summon  him  to  trial. 

While  the  emperor  no  doubt  was  disposed  to 
look  with  contempt  upon  Luther  as  an  arch-her- 
etic and  a  visionary  radical,  still  he  had  admoni- 
tions as  to  his  unusual  force.  He  knew  the  wisdom 
and  conservatism  of  Frederick,  the  great  elector 
of  Saxony,  to  whom  the  imperial  crown  had  been 
offered,  but  who  had  refused  it.  And  the  fact 
that  this  strong  prince  championed  Luther,  in  so 
far  as  to  demand  a  safe  conduct  for  him,  could 
not  pass  unnoticed  by  Charles.  Moreover,  among 
other  letters,  his  own  ambassador,  Juan  Mannel, 
writing  from  Kome,  had  warned  him :  "  Let  his 
majesty  pay  more  attention  to  a  little  monk,  Mar- 
tin Luther." 

Pope  Leo  X  had  sought  to  prevent  the  assem- 
bling of  the  council.  He  wished  to  have  Luther 
peremptorily  condemned.  But  Charles  had  heard 
enough  of  Luther  to  convince  him  that  the  move- 
ment was  too  serious  for  his  sense  of  justice  to 
allow  it  to  be  disposed  of  in  this  summary  manner. 
He  thought  Luther  should  not  be  condemned  with- 
out an  opportunity  to  be  heard  in  his  own  behalf. 
So  the  Ecumenical  council  was  called  at  Worms, 
in  April,  1521. 


24  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

Here  these  two  great  personalities  met  for  the 
first  time.  It  is  hard  to  tell  which  was  looked  on 
with  keener  interest.  Charles,  the  young  emperor, 
clothed  in  imperial  vestments,  and  surrounded  by 
a  most  brilliant  array  of  princes,  cardinals  and 
dignitaries  of  Church  and  State,  was  naturally  the 
central  and  most  imposing  figure. 

On  the  opposite  side  appears  a  humble,  helpless 
monk,  on  trial  for  his  life.  Yet  the  interest  in 
this  lowly  personage  was  perhaps  not  less  than 
that  in  the  mighty  emperor.  For  four  years  Lu- 
ther's writings  and  daring  deeds  had  stirred  all 
Europe.  Theologians  had  read  and  discussed  his 
books.  Litterateurs  and  statesmen  had  seen  in 
them  principles  which  breathed  the  air  of  civil 
and  religious  liberty,  while  peasants  had  received 
comfort  and  strength  from  them  at  their  humble 
firesides.  Luther's  entrance  into  Worms  had  been 
hailed  by  the  populace  with  a  wild  enthusiasm 
that  must  have  sounded  a  note  of  warning  to  the 
lords  both  temporal  and  spiritual. 

And  so  all  eyes  are  centered  upon  the  one  who 
has  caused  this  vast  commotion,  as  he  enters  the 
hall  and  is  led  to  the  stand.  Then,  for  the  first 
time,  Charles  the  Great  and  Luther  look  each 
other  in  the  face. 

A  pile  of  volumes  is  on  the  stand,  and  Luther  is 
required  to  abjure  the  rebellious  errors  and  arraign- 
ments of  Holy  Mother  Church  contained  in  them. 

Luther  admits  their  authorship,  and  then,  instead 
of  giving  a  direct  answer,  asks  time  for  delay.     A 


Luther  Begins  the  Reformation  25 

day  is  given  him.  His  friends,  who  have  never 
seen  his  courage  waver,  feel  disappointed  at  his  ac- 
tion. Luther  was  a  person  who  realized  most 
deeply  his  religious  responsibility.  And  probably 
for  the  moment,  the  awe  which  he  was  trained  to 
feel  towards  Councils,  Pope  and  Church,  as  repre- 
senting the  authority  of  Christ,  the  great  Head, 
overcame  him,  and  he  shrank  from  wearing  the 
stigma  of  heresy.  The  night,  no  doubt,  was  spent 
in  closest  meditation  and  prayer. 

The  next  day,  one  of  the  most  momentous  in 
the  history  of  the  world,  Luther  appeared,  calm, 
confident  and  resolute.  His  course  was  now  firmly 
fixed.  In  an  address  of  two  hours'  length,  in 
which  he  thrilled  the  august  assembly  by  his  re- 
sourceful learning,  his  marvellous  eloquence  and 
intrepid  courage,  he  proceeded  to  arraign  the  dom- 
inant Church  as  having  falsely  interpreted  the 
Scriptures  and  for  introducing  soul-misleading 
abuses.  He  was  twice  interrupted  by  the  young 
emperor,  who  resented  his  challenging  the  author- 
ity of  the  Pope,  and  especially  of  a  general  ecclesi- 
astical council,  as  sacrilege.  Luther  replied  with 
courtesy  and  dignity,  beseeching  Charles  not  to 
stain  the  splendid  beginning  of  his  reign  by  a 
forcible  attempt  to  suppress  a  movement  inspired 
by  the  true  interpretation  of  the  Word  of  God. 

He  ended  with  those  remarkable  words  which, 
at  a  distance  of  four  centuries,  still  make  our 
hearts  bound  within  us  : 

"  Unless  I  am  convinced  by  proofs  drawn  from 


26  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

the  Holy  Scriptures,  or  from  sound  reason,  I  neither 
can  nor  will  submit  my  faith  to  the  Pope  or  Coun- 
cils as  infallible,  for  it  is  as  clear  as  daylight  that 
they  have  fallen  into  error,  and  it  is  neither  safe 
nor  advisable  for  a  Christian  to  sin  against  his 
conscience.  Here  I  standi  I  cannot  do  otherwise, 
God  help  me.     Amen."^^ 

When  Luther  closed,  the  force  of  his  great  per- 
sonality had  impressed  itself  upon  all.  He  left  the 
hall,  not  as  he  had  entered  it,  but  with  the  gesture 
of  one  who  knew  that  his  words  had  struck  home, 
and  with  the  air  of  a  pikeman  who  had  dealt  his 
blow.  He  had  launched  forth  his  mighty  challenge 
to  Church  and  empire.  As  he  went  out  he  threw 
up  his  hands  joyously  and  cried,  *'  I  am  through,  I 
am  through  ! "  His  friends  crowded  about  to  con- 
gratulate him.  And  the  great  elector,  Frederick  the 
Wise,  privately  expressed  his  pleasure  that  he  had 
taken  so  extraordinary  a  man  under  his  protection. 

This  dramatic  episode  was  the  only  time  Charles 
and  Luther  ever  met,  though  for  the  next  quarter 
of  a  century  they  were  engaged  in  an  unceasing 
battle.  One  striving  to  advance,  the  other  to  sup- 
press the  Keformation,  they  never  saw  each  other 
again. 

Mighty  as  were  the  temporal  and  ecclesiastical 
forces  behind  the  emperor,  Luther,  his  unique  per- 
sonality wielding  the  Word  of  God  alone,  was  the 
real  conqueror,  and  had  initiated  the  oncoming  of  a 
new  age. 

The  day  after  Luther's  defense,  Charles,  who  was 


Luther  Begins  the  Reformation  27 

a  conscientious  adherent  of  the  ancient  regime^  de- 
clared his  resolve  to  loyally  champion  the  ecclesi- 
astical system  in  these  words:  "A  single  monk, 
trusting  to  his  private  judgment,  has  opposed  the 
faith  held  by  all  Christians  for  a  thousand  years 
and  more.  I  am  resolved  to  defend  this  holy  cause 
with  all  my  dominions,  my  friends,  my  body  and 
blood,  my  life  and  my  soul."  Brave,  pious,  noble, 
manly  words !  And  yet  so  mistaken  ones.  What 
a  lesson  of  tolerance,  mutual  forbearance,  and  the 
woeful  mistake  of  judging  one  another,  are  we 
taught  by  such  irreconcilable  differences  between 
conscientious  leaders ! 

A  commission  of  eight  theologians  was  chosen  to 
persuade  Luther  to  make  some  compromise,  but  all 
to  no  purpose.  The  great  reformer  was  too  wise 
and  far-visioned.  He  declared  that  he  would  make 
no  concession  whatever  against  the  dictates  of  his 
conscience,  and  that  he  was  ready  to  lay  down  his 
life  rather  than  to  yield  one  jot  or  tittle  in  his  high 
ideals  of  Christian  liberty.  Persuasion  and  argu- 
ment having  failed,  Luther  was  dismissed,  and  the 
Diet,  on  its  last  day,  without  a  dissenting  voice, 
passed  an  edict  placing  Luther  under  the  ban  of  the 
empire,  and  forbidding  him  to  preach,  and  all  per- 
sons to  give  him  food  or  water,  or  any  support,  on 
pain  of  death. 

Thus,  for  the  moment  Charles  had  scored  a  seem- 
ing victory,  but  nothing  could  stay  the  overwhelm- 
ing flood  of  the  Keformation,  against  which  his  life 
was  to  be  an  unceasing  struggle. 


28  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

Although  Charles  had  declared,  after  hearing 
Luther's  reply,  that  he  deemed  him  heretical,  and 
never  wished  to  hear  him  again,  yet  there  is  evi- 
dence that  he  moderated  his  opinions.  At  the  next 
imperial  Diet  held  at  Augsburg  in  1530,  where  the 
Protestants  presented  their  famous  Confession,  he 
treated  them  with  wise  consideration.  So  benig- 
nant was  his  bearing,  as  contrasted  with  the  fury 
of  the  Komish  theologians,  that  Melancthon  (it  not 
being  deemed  judicious  for  Luther  to  attend  in  per- 
son) wrote  :  "  More  glorious  than  all  his  successes 
was  the  emperor's  control  of  his  temper.  Never  a 
word  or  action  was  the  least  overbearing.  There 
was  nothing  grasping,  not  a  sign  of  pride  or  intol- 
erance. In  spite  of  every  effort  to  anger  him,  he 
listened  to  the  Lutherans  with  a  calm,  judicial  tem- 
per. His  private  life  is  a  perfect  model  of  conti- 
nence and  temperance." 

At  this  point  it  is  interesting  to  note,  as  Chris- 
topher Hare  does  in  his  recently  published  life  of 
"  Charles,  a  Great  Emperor,"  the  moderation  and 
almost  friendly  feeling  of  Luther  towards  Charles. 
Alarmed  by  the  uprising  of  the  peasants,  and  fear- 
ing that  the  ideas  of  liberty  he  had  promulgated 
were  leading  to  revolutionary  extremes  on  every 
hand,  Luther  preached  the  duty  of  loyal  submission 
to  Charles  in  matters  political,  and  the  emperor  ex- 
perienced the  great  value  of  this  attitude  for  years 
to  come.  This  magnanimity  was  ever  character- 
istic of  the  large-mindedness  of  Luther.  That 
Charles  reciprocated  this  friendly  feeling  is  shown 


Luther  Begins  the  Reformation  29 

by  his  action  at  the  Diet  of  Eatisbon  in  1538,  where 
he  caused  his  toleration  proposal  to  be  submitted  by 
friends  to  Luther. 

In  154:7,  the  year  after  Luther's  death,  when 
Charles  entered  Wittenberg  a  victor,  he  visited  the 
tomb  of  Luther  in  the  stately  cathedral.  And  when 
the  Bishop  of  Arras  suggested  that  he  exhume 
Luther's  body  and  scatter  his  bones  to  the  winds, 
he  replied :  "  I  war  with  the  living,  not  with  the 
dead.    Let  him  rest  in  peace." 

It  is  pleasing  to  think  that  these  famous  antag- 
onists, who  met  personally  but  once  in  the  historic 
drama  of  Worms,  and  who  for  a  generation  con- 
tested the  fate  of  the  world,  entertained  for  each 
other  more  or  less  mutual  regard. 

But  it  certainly  never  occurred  to  Charles,  as  on 
that  fateful  day  he,  the  mighty  sovereign,  con- 
fronted the  obscure  monk,  that  four  hundred  years 
later  his  own  name  would  fade,  so  that  it  would 
alone  be  preserved  in  the  dust-covered  archives  of 
history,  while  that  of  the  humble  one  on  trial  be- 
fore him  would  be  known  over  the  world,  even  to 
the  poorest,  and  would  have  an  imperishable  and 
ever-growing  fame.  Still  less  could  Luther  have 
dreamed  of  such  an  outcome. 


lY 
LUTHEE'S  UNIQUE  PEESONALITY 

THE  opening  sentence  of  Dr.  McGiffert*s 
"  Life  of  Luther "  is,  "  Great  men  need 
not  that  we  praise  them  :  we  need  rather 
that  we  know  them."  They  shine  as  stars  of  the 
first  magnitude  over  the  heights  of  greatness,  that 
inspired  by  them  we,  too,  may  rise  to  higher  things. 
The  aim  of  the  writer  is  to  appraise  the  character 
of  a  hero,  who  more  than  any  one  of  these  latter 
generations  has  left  his  mark  upon  the  world's  des- 
tinies. 

Writes  a  great  thinker,  "  It  is  not  so  much  by 
ideas  as  by  personalities  that  God  sets  the  world 
forward."  In  the  case  of  such  an  epoch-maker  as 
Luther,  mankind  naturally  turns  with  the  keenest 
interest  to  study  his  jpersonality.  In  Luther's  case, 
this  is  especially  fascinating.  No  element  of  power, 
or  variety,  or  charm,  or  romance  seems  lacking  to 
it.  It  is  perhaps  the  richest  and  most  attractive 
personality  in  history.  Wrote  Phillips  Brooks: 
"  Luther  is  one  of  the  greatest  men  of  human 
history.  It  is  the  personality  of  Luther,  afire  with 
great  indignations,  originating  great  ideas,  writing 
great  books,  doing  great,  brave,  inspiring  deeds,  but 
carrying  all  the  time  its  power  in  himself, — in  being 

30 


Luther^s  Unique  Personality  31 

what  he  was, — it  is  the  personality  of  Luther  which 
really  holds  the  secret  of  his  power."  Says  Dr. 
Dorner ;  "  The  personality  of  Luther  is  one  of  those 
great  historical  figures  in  which  whole  nations  rec- 
ognize their  type."  Coleridge  calls  him  "  the  great- 
est personality  since  the  days  of  the  apostles."  And 
Eucken,  in  his  recent  JSTobel  prize  volume,  "The 
Problem  of  Life,"  pays  him  this  tribute :  "  The 
renovation  of  religion  could  only  triumph  if  a  sov- 
ereign personality  appeared  powerful  enough  to 
penetrate  the  root  of  the  issues,  and  courageous 
enough  to  attack  an  existing  order  made  inviolable 
by  the  faith  of  mankind.  Such  a  personality  ap- 
peared in  Luther;  all  the  spiritual  currents  that 
swept  through  the  Eeformation  became  flesh  and 
blood  in  him  ;  his  masterful  and  concrete  grasp  of 
things  filled  the  whole  movement  with  glowing  life 
and  irresistible  attraction."  Let  us  analyze  this 
colossal  character. 

Luther's  piety 
The  preeminent  feature  of  Luther's  personality 
was  his  living,  energetic  faith.  He  believed,  there- 
fore he  spoke.  Faith  to  him  was  no  shadow,  but 
a  reality.  Consequently,  Luther  laid  hold  upon 
the  truth  with  a  positive  grasp.  His  conviction 
amounted  to  demonstration.  He  was  no  doubter 
or  waverer.  He  did  not  rest  with  half-truths. 
The  Scriptures  were  to  him  the  very  pillar  and 
ground  of  certainty.  Writing  their  words  with 
chalk  upon  the  wall  of  his  room,  or  upon  the  desk 


32  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

before  him,  they  were  for  him  that  one  only  reality, 
armed  with  which  he  shrank  not  from  challenging 
to  combat  the  world,  Satan  and  the  gates  of  hell. 
His  jprayers^  too,  the  most  remarkable  of  which  on 
the  eve  of  the  Diet  of  Worms  was  overheard  and 
preserved,  were  veritable  conversations  and  plead- 
ings with  God.  While  most  reverent,  some  of 
these  prayers,  in  desperate  crises,  were  very  bold 
in  their  wrestlings  with  the  Almighty.  Such  was 
his  half  threat, — when  his  coadjutor,  Melancthon, 
lay  dying,— that  if  the  Lord  would  not  restore 
Melancthon,  he  would  abandon  His  cause.  And 
so  sure  then  was  he,  that  he  took  Melancthon's 
hand,  and  said,  "  You  will  not  die,"  and  he  pres- 
ently revived.  In  this  case,  as  was  his  custom, 
when  tremendously  in  earnest,  he  stood  with  his 
face  to  the  open  window.  He  prayed  daily,  and 
so  far  was  he  from  using  the  modern  excuse  for 
want  of  time  for  religious  devotions,  that  on  one 
occasion  he  writes  to  a  friend:  "I  am  so  over- 
burdened with  excessive  work  and  toils  that  I  have 
had  to  increase  my  time  for  prayer  an  hour  each 
day  in  order  that  I  may  get  through." 

"Luther's  force  lay  in  this  awful  earnestness 
which  made  thoughts  things  to  him,  so  that  it 
was  not  he  that  spoke,  but  the  truth  itself  which 
thundered  from  his  lips,  the  fact  which  stood 
visibly  before  your  eyes."  This  living  faith  it  was 
that  enabled  him  to  speak  with  authority,  and  to 
place  his  single  individuality  against  the  swords  of 
emperors,  the  fiats  of  popes  and  the  councils  of  the 


Luther's  Unique  Personality  33 

universal  Church.  The  world  is  not  moved  by 
negations,  by  skeptics,  by  half-doubters.  These 
may  flare  like  a  rocket,  but  as  soon  expire.  Per- 
manent influence  is  but  wrought  by  men  of  definite 
beliefs,  of  positive  faiths,  of  strong  convictions. 
The  spirit  which  met  without  flinching  the  lions 
in  the  Roman  amphitheatre,  or  suffered  in  the  dun- 
geons of  the  Middle  Ages,  or  that  crossed  the  seas 
to  conquer  and  transform  this  American  wilderness 
into  a  cultured  civilization,  had  no  infidelity  in  it, 
was  not  tinctured  with  modern  agnosticism,  did  not 
have  doubts  of  God,  or  ignoble  conceptions  of  man's 
origin  and  destiny.  But,  simple  in  heart  and  often 
unschooled  in  letters,  these  men  were  strong  and 
overcame  because  of  the  robust  manliness  of  their 
faith.  Here,  then,  lay  the  wand  of  Luther's  might, 
in  that  he  dwelt  in  "  the  secret  place  of  the  Most 
High  and"  abode  "under  the  shadow  of  the  Al- 
mighty." He  experienced  religion, — that  noblest 
impress  of  the  Creator's  image — in  the  furthest 
height,  depth  and  reach  of  its  uplift,  wonder, 
beauty,  joy  and  power.  In  short,  it  was  because 
Luther's  personal,  living  piety  made  him  the  first 
Christian  of  the  modern  world, — the  nearest  in  his 
walk  to  Christ  and  to  God — that  he  was  able  to  be- 
come the  spiritual  guide  of  these  latter  generations. 

Luther's  originality 
The  genius  of  Luther  again  was  origmal.     He 
was  of  the  Platonic  type  of  thinkers.     His  mind 
was  creative.    He  was  not  the  product,  but  the 


34  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

architect  of  his  age.  The  questions — religious,  polit- 
ical and  social — that  agitated  his  time,  were  burned 
and  fused  in  the  glowing  fires  of  his  individual 
experience.  "  The  true  history  of  the  world,"  sa- 
gaciously remarks  Max  Muller,  "must  always  be 
the  history  of  the  few."  Without  pre-announce- 
ment,  these  great,  original  characters  appear,  who 
change  the  face  of  the  world.  Such  an  epoch- 
making  personality  was  Luther.  It  is  often  thought 
that  the  time  was  ripe  for  him.  "But,"  writes 
James  Freeman  Clarke,  "if  the  man  could  have 
done  nothing  without  the  hour,  the  hour  would 
have  passed  unless  the  man  had  appeared."  So 
wrote  the  philosopher  Schlegel:  "The  Protestant 
religion  is  solely  the  work  and  deed  of  one  man, 
unique  in  his  way,  Martin  Luther."  It  was  this 
original,  masterful  force  that  gave  Luther  leader- 
ship. His  colossal  figure  is  foremost  on  the  field. 
Statesmen,  theologians,  generals,  bow  to  his  com- 
manding wisdom.  The  historian  Froude,  therefore, 
truly  says :  "  If  the  Keformation  had  been  led  by 
Zwingli  or  Carlstadt  it  would  have  failed.  But 
that  it  was  able  to  establish  itself  was  due  to  the 
one  fact  that  there  existed  at  the  crisis  a  single 
person  of  commanding  mind  in  whose  words  the 
bravest  and  truest  saw  their  own  thoughts  repre- 
sented, and  that,  recognizing  him  as  the  wisest 
among  them,  he  was  allowed  to  impress  upon  the 
Eeformation  his  own  individuality."  And  Ma- 
caulay  makes  the  point  that,  owing  to  his  wise  and 
temperate  counsels,  while  Luther  lived,  peace  pre- 


Luther's  Unique  Personality  35 

vailed  and  whole  nations  came  over  to  Protestant- 
ism in  a  day,  but,  after  his  death,  terrible  wars 
broke  out,  and  Eomanism  has  ever  since  held  at 
least  her  territory. 

Luther  himself  felt  the  original  source  of  his 
inspirations.  As  the  visions  of  world-wide  revolu- 
tions swept  before  his  spirit,  he  exclaims  in  awe, 
"  I  know  not  whence  these  thoughts  come  to  me." 
Luther's  daring  initiative  thoughts  did  indeed  come 
from  above,  but  he  owed  them  to  no  man  or  age. 
This  claim  to  originality,  like  every  other,  his 
enemies — and  especially  the  Komanist,  Denifle — 
have  disputed.  They  have  tried  to  show  that  he 
borrowed  his  ideas  from  preceding  reformers  who 
had  failed.  But  Professor  Bohmer  of  Marburg 
University,  who  has  written  the  latest  life  of 
Luther,  which  is  most  remarkable  for  its  prodigious 
research  into  the  authorities  of  the  Keformation, 
and  also  for  its  profound  psychological  analysis  of 
Luther,  vindicates  conclusively  his  originality.  He 
shows  that  it  is  easy  to  learn  the  mind  of  Luther 
from  the  copious  notes  and  criticisms  he  was  ac- 
customed to  make  on  the  margin  of  books.  And 
that,  while  his  reading  was  omnivorous,  and  he 
studied  with  the  closest  care  the  mystics,  the 
rationalists,  the  classics,  the  humanists,  the  greatest 
theologians, — especially  his  favourite,  Augustine, — 
he  fused  all  their  thoughts  into  his  comprehensive 
brain,  and  then  deduced  his  own  conclusion,  never 
being  enslaved  by  them,  but  ever  maintaining  his 
independent    thought.       The    conception    of    the 


36  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

grace  of  God  in  Christ,  which  he  grasped,  was  a 
rediscovery,  and  he  ever  made  it  his  overmaster- 
ing guide.  In  fact,  his  work  was  not  so  much  a 
re-formation  as  a  re-creation.  It  was  the  central 
truth  of  the  Gospel,  which  had  been  totally  lost, 
that  he  published  to  the  Christian  world. 

After  this  exhaustive  inquiry.  Professor  Bohmer 
concludes :  "  While  Luther  has  studied  all  these 
systems,  the  final  product  is  in  no  way  the  logical 
result  of  these  several  educational  factors,  but  is 
something  new  and  original,  something  that  had 
never  existed  before,  for  the  explanation  of  which 
one  must  always  again  point  to  a  wholly  incom- 
mensurable quantity:  the  personal  peculiarity  of  the 
reformer.  Luther's  whole  course  of  development 
is  just  as  original  as  the  result."  This  originality 
makes  Luther  the  true  creator  of  the  Keformation. 

Luther's  universality 
A  marked  trait  of  Luther  was  universality.  He 
is  the  most  full-orbed  historic  character.  His  was 
a  many-sided  greatness.  "  He  combined  qualities," 
says  Heine,  "  which  we  are  accustomed  to  consider 
irreconcilable  antagonisms."  "  One,"  says  Melanc- 
thon,  "  is  a  scholar,  another  a  logician,  another  an 
orator,  but  Luther  is,  all  in  all,  a  miracle  among 
men."  Says  Luthardt:  "Depth  of  feeling  and  a 
childlike  mind,  holy  seriousness  and  playful  cheer- 
fulness, an  eye  which  penetrated  to  the  depths  of 
eternity,  yet  at  the  same  time  joyfully  tarried  with 
every  flower  of  the  field — all  were  combined  in 


Luther's  Unique  Personality  37 

him.  He  could  wrestle  all  day  with  dry  Hebrew 
roots,  and  in  the  evening  lose  his  soul  in  the 
melodies  of  his  flute  under  the  soft  radiance  of  the 
stars."  He  was  at  once  theologian,  statesman, 
poet,  musician,  naturalist  and  humorist.  Said 
President  Hastings  of  Union  Theological  Seminary : 
"  He  touched  whole  spheres  of  human  nature  to 
which  Calvin  was  a  stranger."  He  revered  the 
Fathers,  but  ridiculed  their  trivialities.  He  bowed 
to  antiquity,  but  divined  and  welcomed  modernity. 
He  loved  authority,  but  championed  liberty.  He 
made  bold  to  interpret  Scripture  in  the  freedom  of 
its  spirit,  without  disregarding  its  letter.*  He  saw 
the  fundamental  in  the  doctrine  and  the  indifferent 
in  the  form.  He  was  a  high,  pure  idealist,  and  yet 
a  practical,  wise  diplomatist.  According  to  Dr. 
Dorner,  in  his  universal  brain  he  forecasted  all  the 
leading  questions  that  have  troubled  Christendom 
these  four  succeeding  centuries,  and  indicated  their 
true  solution.  "  Luther's  mind,"  says  Froude,  "  was 
literally  world-wide ;  his  eyes  were  forever  observ- 

*  A  remarkable  illustration  of  the  conception  of  Luther's  broad- 
ness and  freedom  of  spirit  is  shown  in  the  great  critic  Lessing's 
appeal  to  Luther,  from  those  who  severely  condemned  him  :  "Oh, 
that  Luther  could  judge  me  !  He  whom  I  prefer  of  all  others  for 
my  judge !  Luther,  thou  great  misunderstood  !  And  by  none 
more  misunderstood  than  by  those  short-sighted,  headstrong  men, 
who,  with  thy  slippers  in  their  hands,  saunter,  screaming  or  in- 
different, along  the  path  prepared  by  thee.  Thou  hast  delivered 
us  from  the  yoke  of  tradition,  who  shall  deliver  us  from  the  more 
intolerable  yoke  of  the  letter !  Who  shall  bring  us  at  last  a 
Christianity  such  as  thou  wouldst  now  teach,  such  as  Christ  Him- 
self would  teach  !" 


38  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

ant  of  what  was  around  him.  At  a  time  when 
science  was  scarcely  out  of  its  shell,  Luther  had 
anticipated  by  mere  genius  the  generative  functions 
of  flowers  ;  human  nature  he  had  studied  like  a 
dramatist ;  his  memory  was  a  museum  of  historical 
information,  scarce  a  subject  on  which  he  had  not 
something  remarkable  to  say." 

THE  CONSEKVATISM   OF  LUTHER 

Luther  again  was  conservative.  He  was  no 
radical.  He  was  not  an  iconoclast.  He  respected 
the  traditions  of  mankind  as  its  greatest  storehouse 
of  truth  and  wisdom.  He  was  not  ever  running 
after  some  new  thing.  He  revered  history  and  the 
teachings  of  the  past.  But  how  can  he  be  called  a 
conservative,  who  led  the  greatest  of  all  revolu- 
tions, who  overturned  the  most  venerable  of  all 
authorities,  who  gave  birth  to  a  new  order,  and 
whom  Eome  therefore  brands  as  the  arch-destroyer 
and  heretic  ?  The  answer  is,  that  true  conservatism 
does  not  mean  stagnation  and  blind  submission  to 
ancient  authority.  It  recognizes  Goethe's  maxim : 
"  That  which  from  thy  fathers  thou  dost  inherit,  be 
sure  thou  make  thine  own."  It  must  prove  the 
past,  and  it  recognizes  that  the  law  of  life  is  prog- 
ress, that  there  is  a  world-wide  movement  in  his- 
tory.    It  feels  with  Tennyson : 

**  I  know  that  through  the  ages  one  unceasing 
purpose  runs 
And  the  thoughts  of  men  are  widening  with 
the  process  of  the  suns.'' 


Luther^s  Unique  Personality  39 

Luther's  conservatism  was  a  sane,  orderly,  pro- 
gressive one.  It  claimed,  not  authority  for  truth, 
but  truth  for  authority.  Nothing  but  the  dire 
peril  and  crisis  of  Christendom  moved  him  to  chal- 
lenge the  historic  Church.  So,  on  the  eve  of  the 
conflict,  he  wrote  humbly  to  the  Pope:  "Most 
holy  father,  I  declare  in  the  presence  of  God  I 
never  have  sought  to  weaken  the  Komish  Church. 
I  confess  there  is  nothing  in  heaven  or  earth  that 
should  be  preferred  above  that  Church,  save  only 
Jesus  Christ,  the  Lord  of  all."  The  corruptions 
against  which  Luther  protested  are  now  largely  ad- 
mitted by  Komanists,  and  many  of  the  reforms  he 
demanded  Kome  herself  has  since  introduced.  No, 
Luther  was  by  nature  a  conservative.  No  one 
hated  innovations  and  contemned  fanatics  more 
than  he.  It  was  only  when  driven  to  the  wall, 
when  asked  to  immolate  reason,  conscience  and  the 
Scriptures,  that,  to  save  the  life  of  Christianity,  he 
took  up  the  gauntlet  and  called  the  world  to  arms. 
It  was  not  Luther,  but  Kome,  who,  by  answering 
his  just  demands  with  bull  and  anathema,  and  by 
excommunicating  him,  and  millions  and  nations 
from  her  bosom,  rent  the  Christian  world  in  twain. 


AUTHOB  OF  CIVIL  AND  EELIGIOUS 
LIBEETY 

LUTHEE,  further,  was  an  advocate  of  relig- 
ious toleration.  When  we  remember  the 
universal  intolerance  of  that  age,  Eome 
burning  Hus  at  the  stake,  even  the  reformer  Calvin 
burning  Servetus,  and  the  Church  of  England  a 
century  later  keeping  the  pious  dissenter,  John 
Bunyan,  twelve  years  in  Bedford  Jail,  then  can  we 
see  in  Luther  here  a  striking  proof  of  his  originality 
and  independence  of  the  trammels  of  his  age.  In 
Canon  Mozley's  great  sermon  on  Eoman  Infalli- 
bility, he  said:  "  Eeligious  liberty  is  a  point  on 
which  Christianity  and  Civilization  speak  a  common 
language ;  they  abjure  with  one  mouth  force  as  the 
property  of  the  Church,  and  force  as  applicable  to 
religion  at  all."  Now,  let  us  put  by  the  side  of 
this,  Luther.  He  says :  "  I  will  preach,  I  will  talk 
in  private.  I  will  write,  but  I  will  not  constrain 
any  one,  for  faith  is  a  voluntary  act."  Again: 
"  The  mass  is  a  bad  thing,  it  ought  to  be  abolished, 
but  let  none  be  torn  from  it  by  force.  We  have  a 
right  to  speak,  but  none  whatever  to  compel.  If 
I  resort  to  force,  what  shall  I  gain?  Grimaces, 
apings,  cramped  uniformity  and  hypocrisy,  but 
there  will  be  no  heart  sincerity,  no  faith,  no  love." 

40 


Author  of  Civil  and  Religious  Liberty     41 

So,  too,  he  protested  in  stinging  rebuke  against  the 
persecution  of  the  Jews.  Think  of  the  wonder  of 
it !  Standing  there,  four  hundred  years  ago  amid 
the  shadows  of  the  Dark  Ages,  with  his  enemies 
brandishing  the  rack,  the  stake,  and  death  in  his 
face,  Luther  cannot  be  provoked  into  striking  back 
one  blow  with  the  secular  arm,  but  proclaims  the 
iniquity  of  force  in  matters  of  conscience,  and  as- 
serts the  modern  principle  of  religious  toleration, 
just  as  firmly  as  does  Canon  Mozley  in  the  twentieth 
century  addressing  the  cultured  University  of  Ox- 
ford !  Well  then  does  the  historian  D'Aubigne 
say :  "  Luther  was  the  first  to  proclaim  the  great 
principles  of  humanity  and  religious  liberty  ;  he 
was  far  beyond  his  own  age,  and  even  beyond 
many  of  the  reformers  in  toleration ! "  So  our  own 
historian,  Bancroft,  writes:  "Luther  repelled  the 
use  of  violence  in  religion.  He  protested  against 
propagating  reform  by  persecution,  and,  with  a  mild 
moderation,  he  maintained  the  sublime  doctrine  of 
freedom  of  conscience."  And  even  the  Koman 
Catholic  historian,  Michelet,  says:  "Luther  has 
been  the  restorer  of  liberty,  and,  if  we  exercise  in 
all  its  plenitude  this  highest  privilege  of  human  in- 
telligence, it  is  to  him  we  are  indebted  for  it.  To 
whom  do  I  owe  the  power  of  publishing  what  I  am 
even  now  writing,  except  to  this  liberator  of  mod- 
ern thought  ?  "  To  Luther's  breadth  and  genius, 
then,  are  we  indebted  for  the  priceless  boon  of  civil 
liberty  and  religious  tolerance,  and  although  Kome, 
in  a  late  papal  syllabus,  has  dared  to  hold  these 


42  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

ominous  words,  "  The  Church  has  the  right  of  em- 
ploying force,"  we  need  not  tremble,  for  the  stream 
of  time  is  too  strong  for  this  monstrous  claim  to  re- 
sist it.  The  earth  must  roll  back  on  its  axis  before 
the  moral  sense  of  society  recants  on  these  ques- 
tions. 

THE  MODERNISM  OF  LUTHER 

A  note  of  modernism  accordingly  is  character- 
istic of  Luther.  This  is  shown  in  the  striking  epi- 
gram which  Principal  Forsyth  of  Hackney  College, 
London,  cites.  Luther  says:  "The  truest  precep- 
tor, the  most  conclusive  authority,  is  the  thing  in 
itself."  "  What  a  modern  note  that  is ! "  says 
Forsyth. 

In  the  modern  age,  we  do  not  so  much  regard 
forms,  stop  at  technicalities,  or  venerate  traditions. 
But  it  is  the  inner  core  and  verity  of  the  matter, 
the  essential  reality,  the  absolute  right,  "  the  thing 
in  itself "  which  we  want  to  get  at.  This  is  the 
strength  of  the  modern  spirit,  a  source  of  our 
amazing  progress. 

But  it  is  especially  in  his  treatise  on  "  The  Free- 
dom of  a  Christian  Man "  that  Luther  champions 
the  rights  of  one  who  has  attained  joyous  and  ex- 
alted freedom  through  the  grace  of  Christ,  to  true 
independence  of  soul.  In  this  assertion  of  man's 
emancipation  from  spiritual  and  political  bondage, 
Luther  voices  the  truth,  which  is  the  rallying  cry 
of  the  modern  spirit  of  civic  freedom  and  de- 
mocracy.    "  The  Christian  man,"  he  says,  "  is  a 


Author  of  Civil  and  Religious  Liberty     43 

priest  and  king  in  the  kingdom  of  Christ,  and  by 
virtue  of  this  lofty  position  is,  through  faith,  a  free 
lord  over  all  things  and  servant  to  none."  In  read- 
ing this  pamphlet,  we  feel  as  though  it  were  written 
in  the  twentieth  century  instead  of  the  sixteenth. 

We  cannot  forbear  here  to  quote  Professor 
Dorner's  comment  on  this  "  Golden  Treatise,"  as 
he  calls  it.  He  says :  "  It  is  particularly  instruct- 
ive and  refreshing  to  notice  the  quiet  collectedness 
of  soul,  the  deep  rest  and  clearness,  which  Luther 
maintained  at  a  time  when  the  papal  bull  of  ex- 
communication was  hourly  impending  over  his 
head.  This  untroubled  mirror  of  a  childlike  heart, 
in  which  the  peace  of  heaven  is  reflected,  stands  in 
wonderful  contrast  to  the  storms  which  gathered 
around  him,  and  is  a  proof  to  all  men  that  the  con- 
fessor of  the  righteousness  of  faith  had  what  he 
confessed,  and  was  what  he  taught." 


YI 

THE  MYSTICISM  OF  LUTHER 

WHAT  gave  intensity,  delicacy  and  beauty 
to  Luther's  personality  was  the  tinge  of 
mysticism  in  his  religious  experience. 

In  the  solitude  of  his  monastic  cell  he  read  most 
sympathetically  those  powerful  and  beautiful  mys- 
tical writers,  Eckhardt,  Suso  and  Tauler.  And 
from  them  he  learned  how,  regardless  of  all  eccle- 
siastical means,  one  could,  in  the  secret  experiences 
of  his  soul,  enter  into  the  inner  sanctuary  of  the 
divine  presence.  Led  by  their  high  spiritual  in- 
sight, he  heard  the  inaudible,  he  saw  the  invisible, 
he  beheld  the  triune  glory.  Actually,  he  tells  us, 
"  there  were  hours  when  he  believed  himself  to  be 
surrounded  by  choirs  of  angels."  These  ecstatic 
visions  did  not  desert  but  strengthened  him  in  the 
terrible  uproar  and  battle-fields  of  his  life.  And  yet 
his  strong  mental  poise  kept  him  from  being  led 
into  the  impractical  extremes  and  fanaticisms  which 
are  the  mystic's  dangerous  tendency. 

It  was  Luther's  inclination  towards  a  mystical 
habit  of  thought,  no  doubt,  that  influenced  him 
towards  the  life  of  the  monastery.  His  naturally 
buoyant  temper  was  modified  by  a  strain  of  melan- 
choly, caused  by  his  disposition  to  search  deeply 
into   the  darker,  more   difficult  problems  of   life. 

44 


The  Mysticism  of  Luther  45 

And  as  the  monastery  afforded  a  greater  oppor- 
tunity for  quiet  thought,  and  for  the  meditative 
mood  fitted  to  look  steadily  at  these  deeper  ques- 
tions, he  voluntarily  renounced  the  activities  and 
pleasures  of  university  life,  so  that  like  Thomas 
a  Kempis  he  could  say,  "  The  purest  happiness  in 
the  world  is  a  place  of  solitude,  in  a  little  corner, 
far  from  the  noises  and  distractions  of  society,  with 
a  religious  book  in  hand." 

Particularly  was  he  influenced  by  Tauler,  the 
Strasburg  "  Master  of  the  Holy  Scriptures."  His 
"  Golden  Thoughts  on  the  Higher  Life,"  and  other 
writings,  were  in  Luther's  hands.  Tauler  was  one 
of  the  safest  and  most  guarded  of  the  mystics. 
While  urging  the  possibility  of  close  communion  of 
the  spirit  with  the  divine,  he  also  warns  against  a 
one-sided  contemplative  life  and  an  impractical 
quietism.  And  he  counsels  his  disciples  not  to  lose 
themselves  in  lofty,  profitless  speculations,  such  as 
the  mystery  of  "  The  Triune  Being,"  and  other  in- 
soluble problems.  That  Luther  had  studied  Tauler 
sympathetically  is  shown  by  his  declaration  "  that 
Tauler  was  indeed  unknown  in  the  schools  of  the 
theologians,  but  that  he  himself  had  found  more 
genuine  and  sound  theology  in  him  than  could  be 
gathered  from  all  the  scholastic  theologians  and 
universities." '  So  he  published  an  edition  of  the 
"  German  Theology  " — an  epitome  of  all  the  writ- 
ings of  Tauler — and  he  says  in  the  preface  that 
"  he  does  not  know  of  any  theology  in  either  the 
1  Koestlin's  "Theology  of  Luther,"  Vol.  I,  p.  123. 


46  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

Greek  or  Latin  language,  which  is  sounder  or  in 
fuller  accord  with  the  Gospel."  And  still  further, 
he  affirms  that,  "  next  to  the  Bible  and  Augustine, 
no  book  has  fallen  under  my  notice  from  which  I 
have  learned  more  as  to  the  real  nature  of  God, 
Christ,  man,  and  all  things." 

Luther,  then,  has  much  in  common  with  the 
great  mystics.  Like  them,  he  realized  that  the 
heart  of  piety  was  communion  with  the  divine. 
That  one  should  strive  to  "  sit  in  heavenly  places 
in  Christ  Jesus."  That  there  was  no  bliss  in  body 
or  soul  like  that  ineffable  joy  which  comes  from 
ascending  the  mount  of  holy  contemplation,  where 
the  spirit  may  gaze  with  undimmed  vision  on  "  the 
King  in  His  beauty." 

Thus,  there  was  a  sensitive  religious  chord  in  the 
soul  of  Luther  that  vibrated  in  responsive  harmony 
with  the  high  celestial  strains  of  such  an  "  angelic 
doctor"  as  Suso,  the  purest  and  noblest  of  the 
mystic  singers. 

And  he  had  this,  further,  in  common  with  them, 
that  he  held  that  religion,  to  be  known  in  its  full- 
ness, must  be  an  experience.  His  soul  was  too  an- 
hungered for  the  divine  presence  to  be  satisfied 
with  formal  religious  rites  and  monkish  routine. 
He  must  break  through  the  form  and  get  at  the 
inner  spirit.  He  must  know  piety  in  its  hidden 
life  and  power.  He  must  search  the  springs  of 
truth  and  holiness,  and  drink  at  the  head- waters  of 
grace  and  life.  Hence,  in  contrast  with  the  hollow, 
external  professionalism  about  him,  which  tolerated 


The  Mysticism  of  Luther  47 

many  a  gross  impiety  and  immorality,  Luther  saw 
a  far  higher  type  of  religionism  in  the  writings  of 
the  mystics,  and  eagerly  read  them,  and  was 
strengthened  by  them  in  his  longing  for  genuin-e, 
uplifting,  transforming  piety. 

But,  while  Luther  thus  owed  so  much  to  the 
mystics,  and  while  they  contributed  to  give  an  in- 
tenser  spirituality  and  beauty  to  his  religious  expe- 
rience, his  larger  views  of  religion,  his  sounder  rea- 
soning, and  his  saner  judgment,  made  him  part  com- 
pany from  the  extravagances  into  which  their  one- 
sidedness  often  betrayed  them.  Thus  they  did  not 
place  a  proper  estimate  upon  the  Holy  Scriptures. 
They  were  tempted  to  set  an  equal  or  higher  value 
upon  their  personal  experiences.  The  "inward 
light,"  the  spiritual  vision,  the  testimony  of  the 
natural  conscience,  was  often  for  them  all-sufficient 
and  extreme.  They  mistook  the  voice  within  for 
the  voice  without,  of  God  in  revelation.  They  "  fol- 
lowed the  gleam  "  of  their  own  souls,  instead  of 
seeing  the  true  light  of  the  world.  Their  religion 
was  a  religion  not  of  authority,  but  of  the  spirit, 
such  as  Sabatier  defends.  But,  as  President  War- 
field  of  Princeton  Seminary  says  in  The  Biblical 
Review^  April,  191Y :  "  There  is  a  true  sense,  then, 
in  which  it  may  be  said  that  the  unrevealed  religions 
are  ^  religions  of  the  spirit '  and  revealed  religion  is 
the  '  religion  of  authority.'  Authority  is  the  cor- 
relate of  revelation,  and  wherever  revelation  is — 
and  only  where  revelation  is — is  there  authority. 
Just  because  we  do  not  see  in  revelation  man  reach- 


48  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

ing  up  lame  hands  towards  God  and  feeling  fum- 
blingly  after  Him  if  haply  he  may  find  Him,  but 
God  graciously  reaching  strong  hands  down  to  man, 
bringing  him  help  in  his  need,  we  see  in  it  a  gift 
from  God,  not  a  creation  of  man's.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  characteristic  of  all  unrevealed  religions 
is  that  they  are  distinctly  man-made.  They  have 
no  authority  to  appeal  to  ;  they  rest  solely  on  the 
deliverances  of  the  human  spirit.  As  Rudyard 
Kipling  shrewdly  makes  his  *  Tommy '  declare : 

II  I  fpjjg  'eathen  in  'is  blindness  bows  down  to 
wood  and  stone, 
'E  don't  obey  no  orders  unless  they  is  'is 
own.' 

Mysticism  is  the  name  which  is  given  to  the  partic- 
ular one  of  these  structures,  the  predominant  place 
in  which  is  taken  by  the  sensibility.  It  is  char- 
acteristic of  mysticism  that  it  makes  its  appeal  to 
the  feelings  as  the  sole,  or  at  least  as  the  normative, 
source  of  knowledge  of  divine  things." 

This  is  illustrated  even  in  so  guarded  a  mystical 
writer  as  Bradford  in  "  The  Inward  Light,"  as,  for 
example :  "  The  brightest  light  is  within  ourselves— 
every  soul  has  a  Bible — our  chief  duty  in  this  world 
is  to  keep  the  windows  of  the  soul  wide  open.  We 
are  now  face  to  face  with  a  simple  and  superb  fact : 
the  holiest  place  for  every  man  is  within  his  own 
soul.  It  is  more  awful  than  the  holy  of  holies  in  any 
temple"  (pp.  21-25).  And  Fenelon,  the  saintly 
French  mystic,  holds  almost  as  strong  language : 


The  Mysticism  of  Luther  49 

"  We  must  silence  every  creature,  we  must  silence 
ourselves  also,  to  hear  in  a  profound  stillness  of 
the  soul  this  inexpressible  voice  of  Christ." 

Precious  as  is  the  truth  in  all  these  views,  there 
is  the  danger  in  them  of  a  misplaced  and  exagger- 
ated emphasis.  For  when  God  has  spoken,  then 
the  true  Christian  bows  to  the  divine  Word  as  the 
only  absolute  truth,  and,  therefore,  authoritative. 
Luther  had  found  that  Word  the  only  light  in  his 
dark  experiences,  the  only  solace  in  his  soul-trials, 
the  only  healing  grace  for  his  sins.  It  was  the  final 
voice  for  him.  To  its  authority  he  bowed.  It  was 
the  norm  and  standard  of  all  his  thinking.  And 
no  inner  light,  no  mere  personal  experience,  no  voice 
of  the  natural  conscience,  could  supplant  it.  He 
says :  "  O  how  great  and  glorious  a  thing  it  is  to 
have  the  Word  of  God !  He  who  loses  sight  of  the 
Word  of  God  falls  into  despair :  the  voice  of  heaven 
no  longer  guides  and  sustains  him,  he  is  but  the 
blind  leading  the  blind.  But  with  the  Scriptures 
we  have  a  last  and  all-sufficient  authority,  with 
which  we  never  need  fear,  or  want  consolation. 
For  we  see  before  us,  in  all  its  lightness  and  clear- 
ness, the  only  true  and  right  way." 

Then,  too,  the  mystics'  theory  of  immediacy,  of 
direct  spiritual  fellowship  with  God,  made  them 
tend  to  ignore  the  Church  and  the  sacramental 
means  of  grace.  Luther,  indeed,  did  not  exalt  these 
to  so  high  a  place  as  was  given  them  by  the  me- 
diaeval Church,  but  he  still  held  that  they  were  au- 
thorized by  the  Word  of  God,  and  that  rightly  un- 


50  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

derstood,  and  observed  with  faith,  they  were  a 
blessed  and  powerful  means  for  upbuilding  the 
spiritual  life.  Therefore,  so  far  was  he  from  dis- 
crediting or  ignoring  them  that  he  most  highly  esti- 
mated and  most  devoutly  observed  them.  And  he 
stood  for  their  high  place  in  the  plan  of  salvation 
with  unwavering  firmness. 

Luther's  mysticism  then  was  a  guarded,  measured 
and  safe  one.  It  had  no  tendency  to  be  carried 
into  vain  delusions,  or  visionary  extravagances.  Its 
simple,  practical,  religious  tendency  restrained  it 
from  entering  into  anything  like  an  equal  extent 
with  the  mystical  writers,  upon  idle  speculations. 
In  his  pamphlet  of  the  "Babylonian  Captivity" 
he  declares  that  the  mystical  theology  of  Dionysius, 
the  Areopagite,  is  very  destructive,  promotive  of 
rationalism,  more  Platonic  than  Christian ;  he 
warns  believers  not  to  be  led  astray  by  his  vagaries, 
and  he  closes  by  saying  that  "  the  reader,  instead 
of  finding  Christ  there,  will  be  much  more  likely 
to  lose  Him." 

In  short,  the  mysticism  of  Luther  is  a  sane,  sound 
and  healthy  one.  Whatever  is  true  in  its  intense 
personal  experience,  whatever  is  beautiful  and  holy 
in  its  contemplative  thought,  and  whatever  is  gen- 
tle, kindly  and  sweet  in  its  Christlike  temper, 
Luther  possessed  himself  of  and  joyfully  copied,  but 
never  lost  his  anchorage  to  the  authority  of  the 
written  Word. 


yn 

LUTHEE  AND  THE  FINE  AETS 

A  SIGNIFICANT  feature  of  the  personality 
of  Luther  which  has  left  its  marked  im- 
press especially  on  the  more  conserva- 
tive churches  was  his  sensibility  for  the  fine  ai^ts. 
Granite-like  as  was  his  character,  he  had  withal  an 
acute  feeling  for  the  beautiful,  the  poetical,  the 
realm  of  sentiment.  Thus,  looking  out  of  his  win- 
dow one  night,  he  exclaimed:  ''The  wonderful 
temple  of  immensity,  with  clouds  and  stars  its 
dome,  who  sees  the  pillars  on  which  it  stands  ? 
And  yet  it  falls  not — so  let  us  trust  where  we  can- 
not see."  Again,  at  sunset,  seeing  in  his  garden 
a  bird  cozily  perched  for  the  night,  he  soliloquizes : 
"  That  little  bird — it  has  nothing  to  cling  to  but 
its  tiny  twig,  while  above  it  are  the  infinite  starry 
spaces  and  blue  depths  of  eternity — yet  how  fear- 
lessly it  holds  its  wings  and  falls  to  sleep,  while 
the  Maker  of  all  watches  over  it  and  gives  it  too 
a  home."  With  this  poetical  inspiration,  a  taste 
for  the  fine  arts  was  naturally  linked.  He  there- 
fore writes :  "  I  am  not  of  the  opinion  that  the 
arts  are  to  be  destroyed  by  the  Gospel,  as  some 
of  the  super-spiritualists  contend,  but  I  would  like 
to  see  all  the  arts  employed  in  the  service  of  Him 

51 


52  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

who  made  them."  Of  the  art  of  music  in  partic- 
ular he  says :  "  Next  to  theology,  I  give  music 
the  highest  honour.''  And,  hearing  a  fine  air  one 
day,  he  cried  in  ecstasy :  "  If  our  God  has  shed 
forth  such  wondrous  gifts  on  this  earth,  which  is 
little  better  than  a  dark  nook,  what  may  we  not 
expect  in  heaven?"  Of  the  art  of  sacred  paint- 
ing he  writes :  "I  may  for  the  sake  of  memory 
and  a  better  understanding  paint  the  truths  of 
Scripture  on  the  wall."  Again,  referring  to  the 
crucifix,  he  argues :  *'  When  I  think,  as  the  Gos- 
pel enjoins,  of  Christ  crucified,  I  must  frame  be- 
fore my  heart  the  picture  of  a  man  hanging  on 
the  cross,  and  why  may  I  not  do  it  then  to  my  eye, 
since  the  heart  is  of  far  more  importance  than  the 
eye  ? "  "  This  fine  answer,"  says  Dr.  Dorner, 
"  determines  the  relation  of  Protestantism  to  sa- 
cred art."  Accordingly,  Luther  had  his  friends, 
the  great  painters,  Albert  Durer  and  Lucas  Cra- 
nach,  by  their  pencils,  advance  the  truths  of  the 
Eeformation. 

Here  Luther  laid  hold  of  the  profound  fact  that 
the  fine  arts  are  the  handmaidens  of  religion.  This 
world  was  not  made  for  bare  utility.  The  azure 
dome  of  the  sky,  broidered  and  fretted  with  golden 
fire,  the  soft  hues  of  the  landscape,  the  speaking 
silence  of  starry  midnight,  the  Gothic  arch  of  the 
elm  and  oak,  the  lily's  peerless  grace  and  the  gor- 
geous dyes  of  the  insects'  wings — all  show  beauty 
to  be  a  thought  of  God,  and  write  the  Eternal's 
disapproval  on  the  bald  spiritualism  of  Puritanic 


Luther  and  the  Fine  Arts  53 

theories.  Nature  is  a  hieroglyph  of  God,  and  ar- 
tistic, sensible  representation  translates  the  divine 
message.  History,  too,  shows  that  art  was  born  of 
religion,  for  Grecian  sculpture  arose  from  making 
statues  of  the  gods,  and  architecture  has  its  no- 
blest expression  in  the  mighty  rock  temples  of 
India,  the  magnificent  pillared  structures  of  Greece, 
and  the  splendid  cathedrals  of  Christendom. 

Never  then  let  the  reaction  against  Kome  carry 
us,  as  it  did  Carlstadt  and  the  ultra-reformers,  in 
spite  of  Luther's  protest,  into  a  false  attitude  of 
hostility  to  sacred  art,'and  let  us  make  our  churches 
eloquent  with  religious  symbolism,  so  that  the 
sanctuary  may  be  a  sacred  arcanum,  a  Christian 
holy  of  holies,  a  gate  beautiful,  leading  by  ascend- 
ing steps  to  the  glory  of  the  heavenly  temple. 

Protestants  often  wonder  at  the  hold  which  the 
Koman  Catholic  Church  has  upon  her  people,  and 
how  faithful  her  members  are  to  their  obligations. 
The  secret  is  largely  found  in  their  application  of 
the  psychology  of  sacred  art  in  their  worship. 
While  a  Eomanistic  service  certainly  lacks  the 
vitality,  direct  interest  and  instructiveness  of  a 
Protestant  one,  and  strikes  us  as  ritualistic  and 
even  pantomistic,  yet  this  one  point  is  enforced. 
Every  feature  of  the  architecture,  of  the  altar  and 
the  environments,  as  well  as  the  liturgic  services, 
symbolizes  religion.  Eeverence  is  voiced  by  every 
appeal  to  ear  and  eye.  We  feel  that  we  are  ver- 
ily in  the  House  of  Prayer,  that  we  bow  be- 
fore the  throne  of  the  Holy  of  Holies.    Especially 


54  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

does  this  symbolism  make  its  lasting  mark  in  the 
impressionable  period  of  youth.  This  is  a  lesson 
which  Protestantism  must  learn  if  it  would  hold 
the  rising  generation. 


YIII 
LUTHER  AND  WAR 

LUTHER'S  vision  was  so  world-wide  that  he 
has  surveyed  and  passed  judgment  upon 
nearly  every  experience  of  man  and  soci- 
ety. Thus,  he  has  expressed  his  views  very  defi- 
nitely upon  peace  and  war,  a  consideration  of 
which  is  most  apropos  in  the  present  mighty  strug- 
gle of  nations. 

Treitschke  once  ascribed  to  Luther  a  certain 
"  idealism  of  war."  Such  an  idealism,  in  the  sense 
in  which  Moltke  and  Treitschke  himself  advocated 
it,  cannot  be  found  in  Luther's  thought  or  expres- 
sion. The  idea  of  these  militarists  is  that  war  is 
good  and  useful  to  develop  the  noblest  virtues  of 
man.  Moltke  wrote  that  war  is  useful  because  it 
cultivates  the  qualities  of  "  courage  and  self-denial, 
loyalty  to  duty  and  willingness  to  sacrifice  "  ;  and 
he  maintained  that  "•  without  wars  the  world 
would  be  completely  lost  in  materialism  and  would 
become  a  veritable  wilderness  so  far  as  morals  are 
concerned."  Luther's  idea  of  war  was  altogether 
different.  It  is  true  Luther  spoke  of  war  as  "  an 
element  in  God's  plan  for  the  universe."  But  in 
the  foreground  of  Luther's  reasoning  on  the  sub- 
ject always  stood  the  idea  that  war  is  a  necessary 

56 


56  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

evil,  a  matter  of  misery  and  woe.  Nowhere  does 
he  say  that  war  ennobles  the  warrior  or  advances 
the  race.  It  is  nothing  but  a  bitter  and  inexorable 
necessity. 

Professor  Walther  of  Rostock,  perhaps  the  fore- 
most living  Luther  scholar,  has  summarized  Lu- 
ther's thoughts  under  the  title  "  The  Present  War 
and  Dr.  Luther."  The  Reformer  is  made  to  speak 
in  clear  terms  on  the  following  subjects :  "  Is  War 
Justifiable  ?  Sacrifice  in  War  Times.  Prayer  in 
Times  of  War.  War  that  is  Just,  and  War  that  is 
Sinful." 

Here  is  Luther's  argument  in  favour  of  a  war 
that  is  a  righteous  one  : 

"  What  else  is  war  than  the  punishment  of  wrong 
and  evil  ?  Why  does  a  person  go  to  war  except  to 
secure  peace  and  obedience  ?  Although  it  may  not 
appear  to  the  superficial  view  that  killing  and 
robbing  are  a  work  of  love  appropriate  to  Christian 
hands,  nevertheless  in  reality  it  is  a  work  of  love. 
For  example,  a  good  physician  may  find  a  disease 
so  virulent  and  wide-spread  that  he  must  cut  off  a 
hand,  a  foot,  an  ear,  or  an  eye  in  order  to  save  the 
whole  body.  If  one  should  regard  only  the  member 
that  is  cut  off,  the  physician  might  seem  to  be  an 
atrocious,  merciless  man.  But  if  one  regards  the 
body  that  he  has  saved,  it  is  clear  that  the  physician 
is  a  true  and  faithful  man  and  has  performed  a  good 
Christian  deed.  Likewise,  if  I  think  of  war,  how 
it  punishes  the  wicked,  kills  the  unjust,  and  causes 
all  manner  of  misery,  I  may  be  disposed  to  regard 


Luther  and  War 


S7 


it  as  a  most  unchristian  work  and  quite  contrary  to 
Christian  love.  But  if  I  consider  how  it  protects 
the  good,  preserves  and  defends  wife  and  child, 
house  and  home,  goods  and  honour  and  peace,  then 
I  see  how  precious  and  divine  a  work  it  is  and  I 
observe  that  it  is  nothing  more  than  the  amputation 
of  a  leg  or  a  hand  in  order  that  the  entire  body 
may  not  be  ^destroyed.  For  if  the  sword  did  not 
defend  us  and  preserve  the  peace  everything  in  the 
world  would  be  lost  in  turmoil.  Therefore  we  may 
say  that  war  is  nothing  but  a  short  lapse  of  the 
peace  which  preserves  us  against  eternal  and  end- 
less turmoil,  nothing  but  a  small  misfortune,  which 
spares  us  the  necessity  of  an  infinitely  greater  mis- 
fortune." 

From  this  it  will  be  seen  that  Luther  was  not  a 
pacifist,  opposed  to  war  under  all  circumstances. 
And,  as  he  was  so  vigorous  a  fighter  in  the 
religious  sphere  all  his  life,  some  one  has  called 
him  the  Roosevelt  of  the  Reformation.  But  Luther 
must  ever  be  heard  on  both  sides.  And  so  it  will 
be  seen  that  he  is  no  militarist  either.  For  he  finds 
the  ultimate  ground  and  highest  motive  for  war  in 
love.  What  is  contrary  to  love  in  waging  war  is 
contrary  to  God's  will,  even  though  Scripture 
passages  may  be  wrested  to  uphold  it.  But  when 
love  demands  that  a  man  fight  for  the  right,  it  be- 
comes his  sacred  duty  so  to  fight.  Only  when 
Christian  love  is  the  impelling  motive  can  a  man's 
fight  for  the  right  be  called  a  Christian  fight.  No 
Christian  can  regard  any  war  as  justifiable  unless  it 


58  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

is  understood  to  be  a  duty  imposed  by  love.  But 
when  so  understood  it  is  not  only  justifiable,  it  is  a 
sacred  duty.  "All  that  God  commands  and  de- 
sires is  love."  This  is  applicable  to  nations,  as  well 
as  individuals. 

Luther's  teachings  as  to  war  and  peace  are  thus 
seen  to  be  profoundly  wise  and  truly  Christian.  If 
only  wars  were  waged  under  the  dictate  of  love, 
and  if  misrepresentation  of  motives,  falsification  of 
facts,  and  unselfish  aims — as  Luther  claims — were 
eliminated  from  war,  rulers  and  nations  would  be 
far  slower  to  engage  in  it  than  now. 


IX 

LUTHEE  AND  THE  HOME 

NO  picture  of  a  rare  personage  is  complete 
without  a  sketch  of  his  home-life.  Here 
we  see  his  truest  self.  The  home-life  of 
Luther  was  exquisitely  beautiful.  Professor  Pren- 
tiss, in  a  symposium  held  by  the  faculty  of  Union 
Theological  Seminary  on  the  four  hundredth  anni- 
versary of  Luther's  birth  [in  1883],  presented  a  re- 
markable paper  on  "  Luther  and  the  Children,"  in 
which  he  says  that  "Luther  stands  alone  of  all 
public  men  in  history  for  his  tender  sympathy  with 
childhood."  The  artist,  Koenig,  has  drawn  the 
picture  with  which  we  are  familiar.  It  is  Christ- 
mas Eve.  The  tapers  on  the  tree  are  burning 
brightly,  showing  those  wonderful  angels,  stars, 
trumpets,  birds  and  dolls  which  Christmas  trees 
alone  can  bear.  Luther  sits  in  the  center,  his  wife 
leaning  happily  on  his  shoulder,  the  larger  chil- 
dren playing  about,  the  babe  with  its  little  night- 
cap kept  up  for  the  scene.  Luther's  home  was  his 
Bethany,  where  innocent  joy,  love  and  peace  re- 
cuperated him  for  life's  fierce  battles.  He  kept 
open-house.  Theologians,  students  and  friends  were 
guests  every  day  around  his  board.  His  Table  Talk^ 
recorded  by  a  friend,  abounds  in  pious  reflections, 

69 


6o  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

pithy  sayings  and  pointed  aphorisms  and  maxims, 
lighted  by  his  keen  flashes  of  wit  and  humour. 
Dr.  Matthews,  in  his  ingenious  essay  on  great 
conversers,  says :  *'  Luther  was  one  of  the  most 
charming  talkers  of  the  age.  His  conversations 
abound  in  those  illuminated  thoughts  that  cast  a 
light  as  from  a  painted  window  on  every  theme." 
On  reading  The  Table  Talk  Froude  exclaims: 
"  One  ceases  to  wonder  how  this  single  man  could 
change  the  face  of  Europe.  There  is  no  such  table 
talk  in  literature."  This  urbanity  and  Gemuthlich- 
Iceit  shed  genial  warmth  on  the  entire  home  circle. 
Daily  he  discoursed  with  his  children  a  clause  of 
the  catechism.  Nowhere  is  revealed  the  sublime 
repose  of  his  soul  in  God  as  in  the  inimitable  letter 
to  his  little  son,  Hans,  describing  heaven  as  a  fairy 
garden,  which  he  wrote  from  Coburg,  in  one  of  the 
stormiest  and  most  danger-girded  hours  of  his  life. 
The  unutterable  tenderness  of  this  lion-like  heart 
was  shown  when  he  stood  beside  the  dead  form  of 
his  favourite  child,  Magdalene,  of  thirteen  summers. 
After  gazing  long  and  fixedly  at  her  pallid  face,  he 
said  slowly :  "  Yes,  dear  child,  thou  shalt  rise  again 
and  shalt  shine  as  the  sun  !  Farewell,  thou  lovely 
star;  we  shall  meet  again."  All  life  long  he 
showed  the  effect  of  this  blow. 

Luther's  peaceful  death,  in  the  little  town  of 
Eisleben,  where  he  was  born,  asserting  his  trium- 
phant faith  and  uttering  our  Lord's  last  words: 
"Father,  into  Thy  hands  I  commit  my  spirit,"  was 
a  fitting  close  of  his  extraordinary  career.    As  the 


Luther  and  the  Home  6i 

body  was  borne  in  imperial  state  from  Eisleben  to 
Wittenberg,  whole  cities  came  out  to  join  the  pro- 
cession, and  a  voice  of  grief  resounded  through 
Christendom.  All  felt  that  a  mighty  soul  had 
passed,  such  as  long  ages  should  come  and  go  be- 
fore the  world  would  look  upon  again. 

Fitly  is  this  extraordinary  life  characterized  in 
the  remarkable  tribute  of  Thomas  Carlyle  :  "  I  will 
call  this  Luther  a  true  Great  Man,  great  in  intellect, 
in  courage,  affection  and  integrity  ;  one  of  our  most 
lovable  and  precious  men.  Great,  not  as  a  hewn 
obelisk;  but  as  an  Alpine  mountain, — so  simple, 
honest,  spontaneous,  not  setting  up  to  be  great  at 
all;  there  for  quite  another  purpose  than  being 
great !  Ah  yes,  unsubduable  granite,  piercing  far 
and  wide  into  the  Heavens ;  yet  in  the  clefts  of  it 
fountains,  green  beautiful  valleys  with  flowers  !  A 
right  spiritual  Hero  and  Prophet;  once  more,  a 
true  Son  of  Nature  and  Fact,  for  whom  these  cen- 
turies, and  many  that  are  to  come  yet,  will  be 
thankful  to  Heaven."  * 

1 "  Heroes  and  Hero  Worship,"  p.  372. 


LUTHEE'S  FAULTS 

WHAT  of  Luther's  faults  ?  Were  there 
no  blemishes  to  this  fascinating  picture  ? 
Was  there  not  a  reverse  side  to  this 
character,  blending  in  it  such  a  mosaic  of  admirable 
and  even  romantic  qualities  ?  As  no  man  was  ever 
so  adored  by  his  admirers  so  no  one  has  been  more 
bitterly  hated,  and  none  at  whom  have  been  hurled 
such  grievous  charges. 

Hence,  no  inquiry  into  his  personality  is  com- 
plete or  impartial  which  will  not  examine  these. 

He  is  accused  of  being  inconsistent.  Does  he  not 
often  contradict  himself,  and  cannot  directly  op- 
posite views  be  gathered  from  his  writings  ?  In  his 
teaching  as  to  free-will  and  predestination :  the 
definite  separation  and  yet  interrelation  of  Church 
and  State :  as  to  the  necessity  of  the  Church  and 
her  means  of  grace,  and  yet  the  individual  approach 
to  God,  independent  of  all  ecclesiastical  trammels : 
as  to  the  absolute  authority  of  the  Scriptures,  and 
yet  the  right  of  the  Christian  conscience  to  test 
them  for  itself  ;  and  on  similar  points  cannot  many 
of  his  positions  be  faced  with  pointblank  opposite 
citations  from  his  own  writings  ?  This  is  no  doubt 
to  some  extent  true.    But  Luther's  inconsistency  is 

62 


Luther's  Faults  63 

only  such  as,  for  example,  attaches  to  the  Bible. 
There,  too,  we  can  find  statements  which  seem 
directly  to  efface  one  another.  If  one  takes  isolated 
texts,  almost  any  cause,  as  authority  and  liberty, 
war  and  peace,  Sabbath  observance  and  freedom, 
prohibition  and  temperance,  can  be  proven.  So,  Life 
is  full  of  contradictions.  Nature,  so  suffused  with 
wonder,  benevolence  and  charm,  is  subject  to  John 
Stuart  Mill's  terrific  arraignment.  Hegel  postu- 
lates truth  itself  as  the  final  result  of  two  seemingly 
opposed  truths, — positive  and  negative — harmo- 
nized into  a  third  greater  and  absolute. 

Such  is  the  inconsistency  of  great  natures,  and 
such  was  Luther's.  He  wore  his  heart  on  his  sleeve. 
He  never  troubled  himself  as  to  the  consistency  of 
his  utterances.  When  he  was  writing  on  the  theme 
of  the  hour,  he  expressed  himself  with  the  most 
impulsive  intensity.  At  another  time,  when  the 
situation  demanded  the  opposite  truth,  he  uttered 
just  as  strongly  the  contrary  ethical  lesson.  But 
he  was  only  expressing  the  many-sidedness  of  relig- 
ion. And  on  any  one  point,  all  his  utterances  must 
be  compared.  He  cannot  be  judged  from  isolated 
passages.  And  thus  tried,  it  will  be  found  that  his 
seeming  contradictions  only  set  forth  truth  in  its 
generic  and  many-sided  relations.  Luther's  appar- 
ent inconsistency,  then,  but  results  from  his  large- 
ness of  vision,  his  capacity  not  to  be  misled  by  the 
narrow  and  particular,  but  to  see  the  wide  and 
universal. 

The  rigid,  logical  consistency  of  small,  narrow, 


64  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

mechanical  minds  has  often  led  to  the  grossest  in- 
consistencies and  to  the  most  frightful  orgies  of 
blood  and  stake.  This  largeness  of  Luther's  nature, 
despite  the  seeming  contradictions  which  it  some- 
times involves,  we  believe  was  one  of  the  singular 
excellencies  of  his  character.  Thus  Hamann,  the 
Koman  Catholic  critic,  speaking  of  the  charge  of 
inconsistency  made  against  Luther,  remarks  that 
great  and  powerful  personalities  are  always  inclined 
to  paradoxes,  and  so  he  delighted  in  Luther's  exag- 
gerations, his  harshnesses,  and  his  contradictions. 

One  of  the  defects  most  frequently  urged  against 
Luther  is  that  he  had  an  unpleasant  and  severe 
temper.  That  he  struck  back  furiously  at  his  foes. 
That  with  his  power  of  conviction  and  resources  of 
wit  and  humour,  his  outbursts  were  flame-tipped, 
there  can  be  no  doubt.  Yet  when  we  consider  the 
bitter  style  of  theological  discussion  in  that  age, 
Luther's  fierce  invectives  are  gentle  compared  with 
the  coarseness  of  Henry  YIII's  abuse  of  him.  And 
when  we  remember  the  fierce  papal  anathemas 
hurled  daily  at  him,  denouncing  him  as  a  child  of 
Satan,  and  consigning  him  to  the  lowest  hell,  it 
is  not  to  be  wondered  at  if  the  giant,  roused  to 
frenzy,  used  epithets  of  rage  and  contempt  that 
strike  us  as  intemperate.  That  is  a  natural  tendency 
of  deeply  impassioned  titanic  personalities,  engaged 
in  a  world-wide  struggle. 

On  the  other  hand,  manifold  are  the  testimonies 
to  the  sweetness  and  winsomeness  of  Luther's  char- 
acter :  as  the  portraiture  of  his  geniality  and  hu- 


Luther's  Faults  65 

mour  at  Duke  George's  banquet  given  at  the  Eck 
discussion;  also  the  charming  narrative  of  the 
merchants  and  students  who  were  entertained  by 
him  incognito,  at  the  inn,  the  rainy  night  in  Jena. 
But  the  most  significant  testimony  was  that  of 
Melancthon,  who  was  Luther's  contrast  in  vacilla- 
tion and  tendency  to  compromise,  and  whom  Luther 
had  severely  to  rebuke  so  often  to  save  the  Kefor- 
mation,  yet  never  did  he  break  with  him  in  friend- 
ship, and  said  Melancthon  in  his  funeral  oration : 
"  Every  one  who  knew  him  well  must  bear  witness 
to  the  fact  that  he  was  a  very  kind  man,  gracious 
in  all  his  words,  friendly,  and  charming  and  not  at 
all  bold,  impetuous,  headstrong  or  quarrelsome. 
His  heart  was  true  and  without  guile." 

Mosellan,  one  of  the  scholars  of  Leipsic,  who 
came  to  know  Luther  personally  at  the  time  of  the 
disputation  there,  says  of  him  in  a  letter  to  a  friend : 
"  In  his  life  he  is  kindly  and  courteous.  There  is 
nothing  stoical  or  supercilious  about  him.  He 
knows  how  to  conduct  himself  under  all  circum- 
stances. In  society  he  is  always  bright  and  cheer- 
ful, however  direful  the  threats  of  his  enemies.  So 
that  it  would  be  hard  to  believe  that  this  man  could 
undertake  such  serious  things  without  the  favour  of 
God."  The  same  kind  of  testimony  comes  from 
a  multitude  of  other  witnesses,  people  who  were 
personally  acquainted  with  the  man,  Luther.  The 
picturesque  element  of  his  character,  the  biting 
force  of  his  words,  and  the  dauntless  courage  of  his 
deeds,  while  they  condemned  him  severely  among 


66  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

his  enemies,  nevertheless  commended  him  the  more 
heartily  to  his  friends.  "Throughout  his  public 
life  Luther  manifested  a  capacity  for  personal 
friendship,  a  talent  for  binding  men  to  himself  by 
strong  personal  ties,  that  is  unique  among  the  great 
reformers  and  with  few  parallels  in  history." ' 
And  Professor  Bohmer  in  the  latest  life  of  him, 
just  issued,  speaks  of  "  his  delicate  affection,  friendli- 
ness and  paternal  mildness,  which  this  powerful 
man  otherwise  exhibited  towards  so  many  worthy 
and  unworthy  persons." 

Luther  himself,  when  confronted  with  his  books 
at  Worms,  admitted  that  in  his  controversial  writ- 
ings he  had  often  exhibited  an  intemperance  of 
severity,  for  which  he  was  willing  humbly  to  apolo- 
gize. At  another  time  he  says  in  defense  of  this 
roughness :  "  My  own  writings  are  like  a  wild  for- 
est, compared  with  the  gentle,  limpid  fluency  of 
his  (Brenz's)  language.  If  small  things  dare  be 
compared  with  great,  my  words  are  like  the  spirit 
of  Elijah — a  great  and  strong  wind,  rending  the 
mountains  and  breaking  in  pieces  the  rocks ;  and 
his  is  the  *  still  small  voice.'  But  yet  God  uses 
also  coarse  wedges  for  splitting  coarse  blocks ;  and 
besides  the  fructifying  grain,  He  employs  also  the 
rending  thunder  and  lightning  to  purify  the  atmos- 
phere. I  must  root  out  the  stumps  and  trunks,  and 
I  am  a  rough  woodsman  who  must  break  the  road 
and  prepare  it ;  but  Magister  Philip  (Melancthon) 
goes  on  quietly  and  gently,  plows  and  plants,  sows 
*  Professor  Wentz's  "Four  Centuries  of  Luther." 


Luther's  Faults  67 

and  waters  joyfully."  But  at  other  times  he  did 
not  seem  to  feel  this  apologetic  spirit.  For,  speaking 
of  his  occasional  outbursts  of  polemical  violence,  he 
says :  ''  Kighteous  anger  against  God's  enemies  is 
the  duty  of  a  Christian.  I  never  work  so  well,  or 
am  so  able  to  exercise  energy,  or  achieve  such  suc- 
cess, as  when  I  am  angry.  It  dissipates  my  apathy, 
and  calls  out  all  my  powers."  After  all  it  was  the 
Luther,  aflame  with  righteous  anger,  who  alone  was 
able  to  face  an  embattled  papal  power.  But  so 
universal  and  emphatic  is  the  testimony,  that  it  is 
conclusively  established  that  Luther  was  not,  as 
often  represented,  severe,  unpleasant  and  coarse, 
but  that  contrariwise  he  was  of  a  remarkably  affa- 
ble spirit,  bright,  kindly,  buoyant  and  witty,  a 
charming  companion,  a  most  genial  personality. 

But  was  not  Luther  guilty  of  uncharitaUeness  in 
the  dispute  with  Zwingli  at  Marburg?  And  did 
not  his  uncompromising  position  there  cause  the 
divergence  of  Protestantism  into  two  camps  ? — an 
evil  felt  deeply  to  our  day.  In  considering  this, 
we  must  remember  the  wise  caution  essential  to 
the  success  of  so  revolutionary  and  far-reaching  a 
movement  as  the  Eeformation.  Carlstadt,  and  his 
school,  had  already  committed  violent  excesses,  and 
the  mighty,  compact  organization  of  Eome  took 
advantage  of  these  abuses  to  prophesy  the  speedy 
dissolution  of  Protestantism. 

Luther,  then,  standing  at  the  fountain  head,  must, 
above  all  things,  be  on  his  guard  against  a  destruc- 
tive radicalism.    He  believed  that  in  quite  empty- 


68  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

ing  the  sacrament  of  its  Scriptural  and  historic 
force  as  a  means  of  grace,  there  lay  the  germ  of 
rationalism,  and  accordingly  he  felt  compelled  to 
reject  Zwingli's  extended  hand.  The  greatest  theo- 
logians believe  that  Luther's  firmness  at  Marburg 
saved  the  Keformation.  And  the  fact  that  the 
largest  churches  of  Protestantism,  the  more  con- 
servative, with  their  higher  theories  of  the  sacra- 
ments, are  also  the  most  vigorous  and  progressive 
ones,  strengthens  his  attitude  as  not  uncharitable, 
but  wisely  judicious. 

But  did  not  Luther  believe  in  a  jpersonal  devil, 
in  a  literal  hell,  in  demoniacal  possessions,  sorcerers, 
hobgoblins  and  witches  ?  And  did  he  not  thereby 
evince  a  superstitious  weakness  unworthy  of  a 
great  personality?  That  Luther  had  some  such 
beliefs  is  undeniable.  Especially  did  he  believe  in 
Satan  as  the  head  of  these  evil  spirits.  They  are 
but  his  emissaries,  working  everywhere  to  tempt 
and  mislead,  and  to  inflict  hurts  and  miseries  upon 
men,  women  and  children. 

Particularly  was  the  Pope,  and  also  the  papal 
tools  with  their  plots  and  malignant  schemes,  under 
his  control. 

However,  it  is  to  Luther's  credit  that  he  had  no 
fear  of  even  Satan  himself,  and  when  he  assailed 
him  with  a  great  temptation,  he  would  fell  him 
with  a  mighty  word  of  Scripture,  or  even  hurl  his 
inkstand  at  him,  and  it  was  with  a  joyful  feeling  of 
triumph  that  he  saw  the  malicious  old  fiend  flee 
from  his  holy  wrath  in  terror. 


Luther's  Faults  69 

No  doubt  he  meant  literally  his  famous  saying : 
"Though  there  be  as  many  devils  in  Worms  as 
there  are  tiles  on  the  roofs  of  the  houses,  yet  will  I 
go  thither." 

But  on  the  other  hand,  Luther  believed  in  benefi- 
cent spirits,  who  went  to  and  fro,  doing  the  Al- 
mighty's will  on  the  earth.  He  felt  that,  with 
Elisha,  in  the  great  battle  with  the  ungodly,  he  was 
surrounded  by  an  invisible  host  of  chariots  and 
horses  of  fire.  He  believed,  too,  that  every  Chris- 
tian has  his  guardian  angel. 

But  as  to  this  charge  against  Luther,  we  must 
remember  that  notable  saying  of  Goethe :  "  Super- 
stition is  the  heritage  of  energetic  and  noble  na- 
tures." Again,  says  the  philosopher  Bacon :  "  Every 
superstition  is  the  shadow  of  a  great  truth."  Men 
gifted  with  exceptional  spiritual  insight  see  deeper 
into  that  strange  mystery  of  light  and  darkness, 
good  and  evil,  God  and  Satan,  than  do  others. 
And  unless  our  Gospels  are  altogether  unreliable, 
our  Lord  believed  in  a  personal  devil. 

And  were  we  to  take  literally  the  assertions  of 
Lloyd  George  and  Bethman  von  Hollweg,  we  would 
have  to  believe  that  there  were  some  German  and 
English  demoniacal  possessions  even  to-day. 

And  we  must  bear  in  mind  also  that  in  Luther 
two  ages,  Mediaevalism  and  Modernism,  met.  And 
we  could  not  expect  him  altogether  to  emancipate 
himself  from  the  most  ingrained  traditions  of  his 
time,  and  had  he  done  so,  he  would  have  been 
separated  too  far  from  his  contemporaries  for  them 


70  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

to  have  followed  him.  But  even  in  this  matter  of 
superstition,  Luther  was  far  ahead  of  his  age,  and 
history  shows  that  he  was  personally  more  enlight- 
ened than  the  majority  of  the  educated  class  of 
that  time.  He  ridiculed  with  the  keenest  sarcasm 
many  of  the  magic  arts,  exorcisms  and  sorceries  in 
vogue,  and  by  his  telling  blows  did  more  to  impair 
the  reign  of  superstition  than  any  of  his  contem- 
poraries. 

Eomanists  have  even  assailed  Luther's  private 
life  and  morals  with  furious  violence.  They  have 
charged  him  with  the  grossest  vices.  They  have 
called  him, — we  quote — "  a  drunkard,  glutton,  por- 
nographer,  forger  and  liar."  To  show  the  proof  on 
which  such  calumnies  rest,  Denifle  cites  Luther's 
words,  viz. :  "I  am  not  now  drunk  or  indiscreet," 
which  he  calls  a  confession  of  habitual  drunken- 
ness. But  he  fails  to  cite  the  whole  passage,  for 
it  continues :  "  Christ  was  not  drunk  when  He  spoke 
the  sacramental  words  of  the  Holy  Eucharist,  God  is 
not  drunk,  the  evangelists  are  not  drunk."  So, 
according  to  Denifle's  argument,  Luther  would  con- 
fess Christ  and  God  and  the  evangelists  to  be  habit- 
ually given  to  intoxication.  Luther  merely  meant 
by  this  strong  metaphor  to  emphasize  the  well- 
weighed  and  sober  discretion  of  his  words. 

Luther  did  indeed  take  his  glass  of  good  wine 
with  relish,  after  the  manner  of  his  time,  and  even 
after  the  manner  of  some  of  us  in  our  times  who 
are  not  yet  converted  to  absolute  prohibition.  But, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  "  in  speech  and  writing,  Luther 


Luther's  Faults  71 

fought  drunkenness  more  vehemently  than  any  Ger- 
man of  his  day."  Luther's  contemporaries  attest 
that  coarse  as  was  his  age,  he  was  ever  chaste  and 
pure  in  his  words.  And  as  a  rule  he  was  abstemi- 
ous in  his  diet,  often  only  eating  a  little  bread  and 
a  herring,  and  once  when  intensely  absorbed  in 
study,  refusing  a  mouthful  for  four  whole  days. 
Nothing  is  a  greater  concession  to  an  enemy's 
strength  and  rectitude  than  when  that  last  and 
meanest  attack  is  resorted  to,  slander  and  abuse. 
Far  more  creditable  is  the  admission  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  DoUinger,  who  says,  "I  see  in  Luther  a 
great  and  noble  character  against  whose  person  I 
would  not  cast  a  stone." 

Luther's  faults  then  by  no  means  appear  to  have 
been  exceptional.  He  had  no  greater  defects  than 
might  be  expected  in  a  character  of  elemental 
strength,  called  upon  to  battle  with  colossal  forces 
and  living  in  a  rude  and  stormy  age.  So  bitter 
were  the  animosities  of  the  time  that  the  slanders 
uttered  against  Luther  were  so  numberless  and  in- 
credible that  he  and  his  friends  could  but  ignore 
them.  And  yet,  through  constant  repetition,  many 
of  them  have  come  to  be  believed. 

But  searching  historical  criticism  has  not  alone 
refuted  them,  but  shown  that  Luther's  greatness 
and  piety  raised  him  above  all  but  very  few  faults. 
His  defects  were  indeed  insignificant,  and  no  more 
blur  his  portrait  than  the  spots  darken  the  sun. 
His  errors,  such  as  he  did  have,  illustrate  that  epi- 
gram of  Goethe.    "  Man's  errors  make  him  lovable." 


72  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

"  We  do  not  love  the  admirable  paragons.  The  note 
of  absolute  consistency  is  formidable  in  any  man, 
and  in  a  woman  terrible." 

The  unanimous  testimony  of  Luther's  associates  is 
to  his  big-heartedness,  urbanity,  kindliness,  gayety 
of  spirits,  and  that  his  sparkling  wit  and  humour 
were  playful  and  not  satirical.  The  verdict  then  of 
mankind  as  to  Luther's  faults  is  rather  that  re- 
markable one  of  Lessing :  "  In  such  reverence  do  I 
hold  Luther  that  I  rejoice  in  having  been  able  to 
find  some  defects  in  him,  for  I  have  been  in  danger 
of  making  a  god  of  him.  The  proofs  that  in  some 
things  he  was  like  other  men  are  to  me  as  precious 
as  the  most  dazzling  of  his  virtues." 


XI 

WHAT  THE  WOELD  OWES  LUTHER 

TO  realize  what  mankind  owes  to  Luther  for 
the  work  of  the  Keformation,  we  must 
look  at  what  the  world  was  when  he 
threw  down  his  challenge  to  the  existing  sacerdotal 
system,  and  compare  it  with  the  world  as  it  has 
been  and  is,  since. 

Although  the  formula  of  Papal  Infallibility  was 
not  officially  declared  until  the  Vatican  Council 
in  18Y0,  yet  it  was  recognized  as  fully  existent. 
This  investiture  gave  the  Pope  the  absolute  right 
to  interpret  Holy  Scripture.  Once  his  decree  had 
gone  forth,  the  decision  must  be  universally  ac- 
cepted as  inerrant.  This  practically  placed  an 
embargo  upon  Scriptural  exegesis.  When  the 
meaning  of  disputed  passages  was  not  to  be  de- 
cided by  linguistic,  historical  and  critical  tests, 
what  use  for  the  study  of  Hebrew,  Greek,  Latin, 
and  the  investigation  of  manuscripts,  and  Scriptural 
learning?  Consequently  very  little  attention  was 
given  to  searching  out  the  true  meaning,  and  open- 
ing up  the  fountains  of  Scriptural  truth. 

Moreover,  as  the  right  of  "  private  judgment " 
was  denied,  and  as  all  interpretation  was  in  the 
hands  of  Pope  and  priests,  the  individual  Christian 

73 


74  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

felt  that  he  was  in  danger  of  committing  sacrilege 
if  he  went  to  the  Word  of  God  for  himself.  Under 
these  conditions,  it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that 
the  circulation  of  the  Holy  Scriptures  was  neither 
encouraged  nor  facilitated,  so  that  practically  the 
Bible  was  excluded  from  the  possession  of  the 
people.  There  could  be  no  stronger  illustration  of 
this  than  the  surprise  and  joy  of  a  brilliant  student 
like  Luther,  when  one  day  he  found  an  entire  copy 
of  the  Bible  chained  to  a  shelf  in  the  university. 
And  so,  later,  "  the  Bible  in  the  hands  of  the  laity  " 
became  his  powerful  slogan. 

Now  when  we  remember  that  "  the  entrance  of 
Thy  Word  giveth  light,"  and  compare  the  hundreds 
of  languages  into  which  the  Bible  is  translated  in 
our  day,  the  circulation  of  copies  by  millions,  as 
the  leaves  of  the  forests,  the  cheap  editions  which 
the  poorest  can  purchase,  and  the  free  distribution, 
we  see  the  change  wrought  by  the  Eeformation, 
through  Luther's  demand  that  every  one's  right 
and  duty  were  to  read  and  interpret  the  sacred 
volume  for  himself.  We  cannot  expect  Christians 
to  be  such  in  deed  and  in  truth  unless  they  are 
informed  and  transformed  by  those  Scripture  truths 
which  our  Lord  declares  are  "  spirit  and  are  life." 
And  this  one  fact  explains  the  far  greater  Scriptural 
intelligence  of  Protestant  Christians  and  the  true 
spirituality  which  characterizes  their  piety. 

But  again  the  Komish  Church  had  abused  the 
claim  to  infallibility  for  ecumenical  councils  and 
popes,  by  the  teaching  of  false  doctrine,  corrupting 


What  the  World  Owes  Luther  75 

the  pure  gospel  teaching.  By  this  perversion  of 
the  truth,  she  clouded  the  minds  of  Christians  and 
obstructed  the  way  of  life.  These  errors  taught 
by  the  Church  were  partly  the  result  of  ignorance, 
and  partly  the  lust  for  authority  and  power. 

A  primary  one  of  these  errors  was  that  to  the 
Church  alone  belonged  the  forgiveness  of  sins. 
The  next  step  was  that  the  Church  could  use  this 
power  over  the  souls  and  consciences  of  men  to 
promote  her  own  selfish  and  temporal  interests. 
Thus  came  about  what  can  truly  be  termed  the 
infamous  sale  of  indulgences.  For  money,  then, 
sins  great  and  small,  sins  past,  present  and  even  in 
the  future  [the  bold  purveyors  of  them  often  pro- 
claimed], would  be  pardoned. 

To  strike  at  this  pernicious  traffic  was  Luther's 
chief  intent  in  nailing  up  his  ninety-five  theses, 
the  twenty-first  of  which  ran :  "  Therefore  do  the 
preachers  of  indulgences  err  when  they  say  that 
by  the  papal  indulgence  a  man  is  released  and 
saved  from  all  punishment."  And  in  the  twenty- 
seventh  he  delivers  one  of  his  cutting  blows  thus  : 
"  They  preach  human  folly  who  pretend  that  as 
soon  as  the  money  cast  into  the  chest  clinks,  the 
soul  escapes."  And  then  Luther  went  on  in  these 
theses  to  declare  that  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  had 
paid  on  the  cross  the  full  penalty  of  human  sins, 
and  that  therefore  any  soul  was  freely  justified. 
All  that  was  needed  was  penitence  and  faith. 
Thus  was  opened  up  again  the  way  of  life  which 
had  been  clogged  and  barred  by  penances  and  in- 


76  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

dulgences  and  ritualistic  formalities  and  meaning- 
less rites,  until  it  was  almost  impossible  to  find  it. 

And  the  freedom,  the  simplicity,  the  confidence 
and  the  joy  Christians  now  have  in  the  Pauline 
doctrine  of  justification  by  faith  alone,  opening  to 
them  a  new  view  and  way  of  life,  they  owe  to  the 
blessed  Keformation  under  Martin  Luther. 

The  blessings  of  a  free  state,  and  of  civil  and  re- 
ligious liberty,  are  another  heritage  the  world  owes 
to  Luther,  through  the  Eef  ormation.  In  the  Middle 
Ages  the  Church,  through  her  claim  to  the  spiritual 
primacy  of  St.  Peter,  asserted  her  right  to  dominate 
the  State.  No  sovereign  could  ascend  the  throne 
without  her  investiture,  and  through  her  bull  of 
excommunication  she  could,  at  pleasure,  release  his 
subjects  from  their  allegiance.  Thomas  Aquinas 
sought  to  show  that  "submission  to  the  Eoman 
pontiff  is  necessary  to  every  human  being." 

And  how  this  principle  was  reduced  to  practice 
is  shown  by  Henry  lY  of  Germany  pleading,  bare- 
headed and  cold,  for  three  days  at  the  castle  of 
Canossa  for  Pope  Gregory  YII  to  restore  his  for- 
feited crown.  So  King  John  of  England,  in  1213, 
after  a  losing  struggle  with  Pope  Innocent,  laid  his 
realm  at  the  feet  of  the  Pope's  legate,  "  to  receive 
it  back  as  a  fief  from  Kome."  In  his  pledge  he 
decrees  "  the  concession  of  the  kingdoms  of  England 
and  Ireland  with  all  their  rights  and  appurtenances 
to  our  mother  the  Holy  Eoman  Church,  and  to  our 
Lord  Pope  Innocent  and  his  Catholic  successors, 
receiving  and  holding  them  as  it  were  a  vassal 


What  the  World  Owes  Luther  77 

from  God  and  the  Eoman  Church,  we  swear 
fealty." ' 

How  fatal  so  preposterous  a  claira  to  freedom  on 
the  part  of  the  State !  How  impossible  under  such 
a  regime  the  development  of  mankind  in  the  art  of 
representative  civil  government !  No  wonder  that 
under  such  a  system  there  developed  in  Europe 
iron-clad  autocracies  in  which  the  rights  of  the 
common  people  were  utterly  ignored.  That  all 
power,  wealth,  utilities  and  ownership  of  land, 
were  held  by  a  very  few.  That  the  princes,  nobles 
and  great  families  led  lives  of  absolute  ease,  selfish- 
ness, indifference  to  the  welfare  of  communities, 
and  spent  most  of  their  time  in  revelry  and  vice. 
And  that  the  masses  of  the  peasants  possessed  no 
rights  that  their  harsh  lords  were  bound  to  respect, 
and  were  doomed  to  lives  of  hopeless  poverty, 
ignorance  and  misery. 

It  was  these  wrongs  and  these  unrighteous  con- 
ditions that  made  the  great  heart  of  Luther  bleed 
with  sympathy,  and  that  fired  his  courageous  soul 
with  hot  indignation.  In  the  boldest  terms  he 
challenges  the  claims  of  the  Church  to  dominate 
the  State,  and  proves  from  the  Scriptures  that  her 
kingdom  is  not  of  this  world,  and  that  she  must 
confine  her  sovereignty  to  the  spiritual  sphere. 
And  in  his  "  Address  to  the  German  I^obility,"  he 
reproves  the  princes  for  their  tyrannies  and  vices, 
and  threatens  them  with  an  outbreak  of  divine 
vengeance,  like  one  of  the  prophets  of  the  Old 

*  "  The  Political  Theories  of  Martin  Luther,"  Waring,  p.  17, 


78  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

Testament.  At  the  same  time  he  pleads  the  cause 
and  rights  of  the  peasantry  in  the  strongest  terms. 

And  it  was  only  under  the  colossal  and  con- 
tinuous blows  of  Luther  that  these  unscriptural  and 
destructive  claims  of  the  Church  were  relegated  to 
the  Dark  Ages,  and  that  there  resulted  the  modern 
Free  State.  Hence  the  boon  of  civil  liberty,  the 
cause  of  human  rights,  the  welfare  and  happiness 
of  the  masses,  and  the  signs  of  the  coming  rule  of 
Democracy  everywhere,  are  our  debt  to  Luther  and 
his  contemporaries  alone. 

And  the  same  is  true  with  respect  to  religious 
liberty.  The  pages  of  history  are  crimson  with  the 
blood  that  has  been  shed  for  conscience  sake.  The 
noblest  saints,  and  those  whose  characters  have 
shed  the  rarest  lustre  upon  our  race,  have  suffered 
the  severest  persecutions,  and  been  broken  on  the 
wheel,  or  burned  at  the  stake,  for  the  only  reason 
that  they  "feared  God  rather  than  man."  The 
fires  of  martyrdom  have  lit  up  with  a  lurid  glare 
the  horizon  from  the  days  of  the  primitive  Christian 
persecutions  down  to  the  sixteenth  century.  And 
even  later,  in  France,  England,  Switzerland,  etc., 
this  spirit  of  intolerance  led  to  barbarous  execu- 
tions. 

And  it  was  alone  owing  to  the  inflexible  stand 
taken  by  the  German  princes  whom  Luther's 
powerful  personality  had  won  to  his  support,  that 
he  himself  escaped  death.  But  from  that  era, 
religious  liberty  has  prevailed  in  Germany,  and 
thence  has  spread  throughout  all  Protestantism. 


What  the  World  Owes  Luther  79 

ISTo  more  burnings  of  a  heroine  saint,  Joan  of  Arc, 
or  of  a  preacher  of  the  pure  Gospel,  John  Hus,  or 
of  a  noble  Archbishop  Cranmer,  or  exile  of  the 
Quakers  from  their  native  land,  for  conscientious 
religious  convictions.  Every  man  now  can  hold 
such  religious  belief  as  he  pleases  and  worship  God 
as  he  thinks  right  "  sitting  under  his  own  vine  and 
fig-tree,  none  daring  to  molest  or  make  them 
afraid." 

And  for  this  most  inestimable  prerogative  of  the 
human  soul,  that  which  affects  more  than  every 
other  his  happiness  and  peace— religious  liberty — 
enjoyed  in  these  later  ages,  in  all  its  fullness,  we 
can  thank  none  other  than  the  indomitable  hero  of 
the  Keformation. 

A  Scriptural  conception  of  the  Church  was  an- 
other rediscovery  of  Luther.  His  studies  of  the 
Post-Apostolic  era  and  the  primitive  Church 
showed  that  its  office  had  been  perverted  from  its 
original  purpose.  The  Church  was  designed  to 
help,  guide  and  strengthen  the  believer  in  the 
Christian  life.  But,  under  the  prevalent  concep- 
tion of  Luther's  time,  it  had  taken  the  place  of 
Christ,  and  stood  between  the  believer  and  his 
Lord  and  Saviour. 

The  great  theologian,  Schleiermacher,  thus  de- 
fines the  diverse  theories  held  by  Luther  and  his 
papal  opponents :  "  According  to  the  Romish  con- 
ception the  soul  can  only  come  to  Christ  through  the 
Church,  whereas,  according  to  the  Protestant  doc- 
trine, the  soul  is  led  through  Christ  to  the  Church." 


8o  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

When,  through  the  Word,  the  believer  has  found 
Christ,  then  the  Church  tenderly  nurtures  within 
him  the  new  spiritual  life.  Luther  by  no  means 
depreciated  the  Church  and  her  legitimate  sphere 
and  authority.  Contrariwise,  he  laid  great  stress 
upon  the  importance  of  the  Church  with  her  Word 
and  Sacraments  as  the  means  of  grace.  By  this 
Scriptural,  Protestant  interpretation,  the  Church 
becomes,  instead  of  an  obstacle  in  the  path  of  the 
seeker,  a  living  shepherd  to  nurture  and  strengthen 
him  in  the  way  of  salvation. 

An  important  practical  result  of  the  Eef ormation 
is  the  change  wrought  in  Public  Worship.  It  had, 
with  the  predominance  given  to  the  priest,  and 
with  the  abnormal  authority  lodged  in  him,  been 
taken  almost  wholly  from  the  congregation.  The 
officiating  clergy  conducted  the  service  mostly 
himself.  And  the  part  of  the  people  consisted 
chiefly  in  routine  formulas  and  inane  repetitions. 
And,  as  the  service  was  conducted  in  the  Latin 
tongue,  and  not  understood  by  the  people,  there 
was  very  little  intelligent  and  real  worship  in  it. 
Besides  the  sacraments,  with  their  forgiveness  and 
grace,  being  in  the  power  of  the  priests,  they  re- 
duced the  preaching  of  the  Word  to  a  very  sec- 
ondary place. 

But  Luther  changed  all  this.  And,  by  having 
the  service  in  the  vernacular  tongue,  and  setting 
aside  many  of  the  meaningless  and  burdensome 
repetitions,  and  encouraging  the  congregations  to 
join  in  the  popular  hymns  he  wrote  for  them,  the 


What  the  World  Owes  Luther  8l 

service  was  simplified,  it  was  made  natural  instead 
of  artificial,  and  inspired  and  enthused  by  Christian 
song,  the  worship  of  the  sanctuary  became  free, 
spontaneous,  joyous  and  helpful. 

Then  Luther  brought  into  the  forefront  the 
prophetic  office  of  the  ministry.  Preaching,  from 
being  almost  neglected,  was  given  the  chief  place 
in  .the  service.  The  art  of  preaching  was  again 
studied,  effective  preachers  and  expounders  of  the 
Holy  Scriptures  were  sought  after,  and  the  churches 
were  filled  with  ardent  listening  congregations. 
The  liturgies  of  the  past,  and  the  usages  of  the  uni- 
versal Church,  freed  from  corruptions,  were  re- 
tained, and  the  Protestant  form  of  worship  became 
an  ideal  one.  This  distinction,  and  this  superior 
simplicity,  directness  and  popularity  characterize, 
to  a  greater  or  less  extent,  all  the  branches  of 
Protestantism. 

The  Worship  of  the  Saints,  which  had  become 
one  of  the  greatest  abuses  and  most  universal  prac- 
tices of  the  Church,  was  rejected.  Luther  tells  us 
that  "  it  took  him  twenty  years  to  emancipate  him- 
self from  the  delusion  of  the  perfect  holiness  and 
power  of  the  intercession  of  the  saints,"  so  deeply 
had  this  fallacy  been  ingrained  in  him.  Then  he 
at  last  learned  "  to  test  even  the  holy  fathers  whom 
he  so  much  revered,  as  Sts.  Augustine,  Jerome  and 
Francis,  by  the  Gospel  of  Christ,  and  he  found 
them  fallible  men." 

Hence  suppliants  were  taught  that  the  worship 
of  the  saints  was  contrary  to  the  teaching  of  Scrip- 


82  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

ture  and  to  the  usage  of  the  primitive  Church,  and 
was  an  act  of  sacrilege.  And,  instead  of  going  to 
the  saints,  who  themselves  needed  intercession,  the 
petitioner  was  sent  direct  to  Christ,  who,  possessed 
of  all  power  in  heaven  and  upon  earth,  and  sitting 
at  the  right  hand  of  the  Father,  Himself  presents 
our  prayers  to  the  Almighty  Throne. 

Luther,  moreover,  gave  us  the  true  ideal  of  a 
Christian  Home.  He  protested  against  the  false 
notion  that  God  could  only  be  served  by  celibacy 
and  retirement  from  the  world  into  a  cloister.  He 
held  matrimony  to  be  God's  order  and  that  of 
nature,  and  that  therefore  it  was  "  a  holy  estate." 
Hence  he  protested  against  the  monks  and  nuns 
shutting  themselves  away  from  the  active  service 
of  men  and  living  at  the  expense  of  the  community. 
And  he  held  that  it  was  desirable  that  the  clergy 
should  marry,  and  be  familiar  with  the  cares  and 
duties,  and  also  be  recuperated  by  the  pleasures  of 
the  domestic  sphere.  And  Luther,  himself,  set  the 
example  of  a  charming  and  happy  family  life. 
Thus  he  glorified  the  Christian  Home.  And,  in 
contending  that  the  humblest  peasant  could  serve 
God  and  the  Church  and  society  by  fidelity  in  his 
lowly  calling,  as  well  as  princes  on  their  thrones,  he 
upraised  and  sanctified  the  duties  of  common  life. 

Koman  Catholics,  intelligent  and  pious,  will  con- 
test this  picture  of  mankind's  debt  to  Luther  and 
Protestantism.  The  author's  friend,  the  accom- 
plished Dr.  James  J.  Walsh,  in  his  very  able  and 
fascinating  volume,  "  The  Thirteenth  the  Greatest 


What  the  World  Owes  Luther  83 

of  Centuries,"  cites  this  eloquent  description  from 
the  historian,  Frederick  Harrison:  "This  great 
century,  the  last  of  the  true  Middle  Ages,  which  as 
it  drew  to  its  own  end  gave  birth  to  Modern  So- 
ciety, has  a  special  character  of  its  own,  that  gives 
it  an  enchanting  and  abiding  interest.  It  was  in 
nothing  one-sided,  and  in  nothing  discordant. 
There  was  one  common  creed,  one  ritual,  one 
worship,  one  sacred  language,  one  Church,  a  single 
code  of  manners,  a  uniform  scheme  of  society,  a 
common  system  of  education,  an  accepted  type  of 
beauty,  a  universal  art, — something  like  a  recog- 
nized standard  of  the  Good,  the  Beautiful  and  the 
True.  Men  utterly  different  from  each  other,  all 
profoundly  accepted  one  common  order  of  ideas, 
and  could  all  feel  that  they  were  all  together  work- 
ing out  the  same  task  "  (p.  12). 

This  is  a  beautiful  ideal,  and  such  a  universality 
and  unity  have  a  surpassing  charm  for  all,  espe- 
cially for  conservative  minds  and  cultured  tastes. 
But,  unfortunately,  it  is  an  ideal  that  cannot  be 
realized  until  humanity  is  much  more  highly  de- 
veloped than  anything  we  can  conceive  of  now. 
As  mankind  is  constituted  at  present,  such  a  har- 
mony would  be  that  of  stagnation,  such  a  unity 
can  only  be  that  of  suppression,  such  a  peace  but 
that  of  death.  It  utterly  lacks  the  breadth,  the 
movement,  the  diversities,  the  activities  and  the 
inspirations  of  life.  That  the  gains  of  Protestant- 
ism have  not  been  made  without  some  regrettable 
losses  cannot  be  denied.    The  unity  of  the  Roman 


84  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

Catholic  Church  has  many  advantages  over  the 
divisions  of  Protestantism,  but  the  price  required  to 
be  paid  for  it  far  outweighs  the  gain.  The  right  of 
private  judgment  and  the  individual  freedom  of 
the  Christian  often  lead  to  a  hurtful  disregard  of 
the  necessity  and  proper  authority  of  the  Church. 

It  is  a  sad  truth,  exemplified  a  thousand  times 
by  history,  that  liberty  is  liable  to  abuse.  The 
larger  privileges  men  enjoy,  to  the  greater  dangers 
and  fallacies  are  they  exposed.  A  strong  govern- 
ment prevents  disorder,  but  it  is  also  hostile  to  free 
growth.  In  Protestantism  we  do  suffer  from  the 
vagaries  of  individualism,  and  the  large  range 
accorded  to  congregations  and  pastors  is  sometimes 
taken  advantage  of  by  sensational  methods  and 
fanatical  evangelists,  by  which  means  the  Church  is 
injured  and  the  influence  of  religion  weakened  with 
intelligent  and  sensible  people. 

But  these  are  disadvantages  inseparable  from  the 
exercise  of  individual  and  ecclesiastical  freedom. 
And  they  are  not  for  a  moment  to  be  set  over 
against  the  inestimable  blessings  of  civil  and  re- 
ligious liberty  procured  by  the  Reformation.  Ro- 
manism has  indeed  the  solid  unity,  the  strength, 
the  massiveness  and  the  immobility  of  a  mighty 
fortress,  but  Protestantism  is  rather  a  majestic  tree, 
its  springing  branches  swaying  freely  in  the  winds 
of  heaven,  instinct  with  energy,  virility  and  growth 
— a  Tree  of  Life. 

Genius  and  the  iron  hand  can  no  more  harmonize 
than  Napoleon  and  Madame  de  Stael  could  live 


What  the  World  Owes  Luther  85 

within  the  boundaries  of  the  same  France.  The 
spirit  of  man,  to  attain  its  loftiest  flights,  must 
have  undipped  wings  and  unwalled  skies.  It  is 
better  to  tolerate  the  vagaries  of  genius  by  giving 
it  the  open,  than  to  stifle  its  powers  within  the  bars 
of  a  prison.  Besides,  if  great  wrongs  have  been 
perpetrated,  and  dangerous  heresies  held  in  the 
name,  and  through  the  exercise  of  liberty,  how 
multitudinous  and  woeful  have  been  the  tyrannies, 
the  persecutions,  the  repressions,  and  the  outrages 
committed  by  authority  ?  The  bloodiest  chapters  of 
the  world's  history  record  its  monstrous  enormities. 
And  the  experience  and  wonderful  progress  of  the 
past  four  centuries  have  given  incontestable  proof 
that  it  is  only  when  the  human  mind  is  unfettered 
by  ecclesiastical  and  civil  tyranny  that  the  race  ad- 
vances most  rapidly  upon  the  path  of  achievement, 
happiness  and  prosperity. 

So  it  is  to  the  work  of  Luther  in  the  Eef  ormation 
that  we  live  in  a  new  world.  In  passing  from  the 
Middle  Ages  to  this  modern  period,  mankind  has 
left  behind  it  darkness,  and  entered  upon  an  era  of 
light. 

On  every  hand  we  see  civilization  taking  greater 
strides.  Absolute  freedom  of  investigation  has  given 
an  immense  impulse  to  science.  Schools  and  uni- 
versities and  specialized  studies  abound  on  an  un- 
precedented scale.  Government,  not  by  and  for 
the  privileged  few,  but  "of  the  people,  by  the 
people,  and  for  the  people,"  is  rapidly  becoming 
universal.    Eeligion,  relieved  of  cramped  uniform- 


86  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

ity,  is  more  spiritual,  vigorous,  joyous  and  true. 
The  missionary  spirit  is  bearing  abroad  the  Gospel 
to  the  nations,  near  and  afar. 

In  short,  no  such  a  wondrous  transformation  in 
the  condition  of  the  race,  no  such  a  new  epoch  in 
civilization,  no  such  a  forward  step  in  the  march  of 
the  human  mind,  and  no  such  a  revolution  in  the 
destinies,  uplift  and  happiness  of  mankind,  have 
been  introduced  by  any  single  personality  in  the 
world's  history  as  that  by  Luther  in  the  work  of 
the  Reformation. 

Yet  Luther's  mighty  task  is  far  from  being  com- 
pleted. Yast  is  the  responsibility  that  rests  upon 
the  Christendom  of  the  twentieth  century  to  carry 
it  forward.  Luther  has  made  a  merely  external 
Church  and  a  merely  formalistic  religion  forever 
impossible.  But  a  spiritual  religion,  charged  with 
living  energy  and  power,  propagated  by  a  Church 
preaching  the  pure  Gospel  of  Christ,  and  winning 
the  world  to  God, — that  is  our  ideal  and  our  aim. 
And  the  larger  the  blessings  of  the  Reformation, 
and  the  richer  the  possibilities  in  it  for  the  uplift 
and  happiness  of  the  world,  the  greater  should  be 
our  devotion,  enthusiasm  and  sacrifice. 


xn 

AMEBIC  A' S  DEBT  TO  LUTHEE 

WHILE  all  civilized  peoples  share  Luther's 
heritage,  yet  especially  here  in  America 
have  we  fallen  heir  to  it.  The  prin- 
ciples of  human  freedom  for  which  he  battled  have 
been  embodied  in  our  institutions  as  in  no  other 
country.  This  is  particularly  true  as  to  the  separa- 
tion of  Church  and  State.  Luther  found  the  State 
dominated  by  the  Church.  He  showed  that  the 
sphere  of  the  one  was  spiritual,  and  that  of  the 
other  temporal,  and  that  each  was  supreme  in  its 
own  sphere  alone.  And  that  to  preserve  each  from 
injury,  neither  should  encroach  upon  the  sphere  of 
the  other. 

Writes  Koestlin,*  "  By  Luther's  entire  conception 
of  the  nature  of  the  Church  and  ecclesiastical  au- 
thority, every  extension  of  that  authority  as  divinely 
ordained,  to  the  sphere  of  temporal,  political,  or 
civil  life,  was  excluded."  So,  conversely,  he  bluntly 
told  the  most  powerful  and  arrogant  civil  rulers 
that  they  should  keep  their  hands  off  the  prepara- 
tion of  confessions  and  statements  of  religious  doc- 
trines, as  being  exclusively  the  business  of  the 
Church's  theologians. 

1"  Luther,"  Vol.  I,  p.  308. 
87 


88  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

We  can  have  no  better  illustration  of  the  prac- 
tical outcome  of  Luther's  principles  respecting 
Church  and  State  than  the  contrast  between  the 
colonists  at  Plymouth  Eock  and  the  Swedes,  settled 
on  the  Delaware  by  the  great  Lutheran  king,  Gus- 
tavus  Adolphus. 

The  former,  although  flying  to  escape  religious 
intolerance,  were  soon  persecuting  Quakers  and  dif- 
fering religionists  as  severely  as  they  themselves 
had  suffered.  Contrariwise,  the  charter  of  King 
Adolphus's  American  colony,  confirmed  by  all  the 
authorities  of  the  kingdom,  specially  guaranteed 
freedom  of  worship  for  those  of  divergent  confes- 
sions. In  this  Lutheran  king's  scheme  of  coloniza- 
tion, all  were  invited  to  enjoy  the  blessings  of  a 
free  state.  Though  a  Lutheran  colony,  supported 
by  a  Lutheran  government,  the  other  colonists  had 
peace  and  equal  protection  in  it  from  the  begin- 
ning, and  when  the  Quakers  came,  they  were  at 
once  and  freely  welcomed  on  the  same  free  princi- 
ples, as  also  were  the  representatives  of  the  Church 
of  England. 

But  chiefly  does  America  owe  to  Luther  her  peer- 
less prize  of  civil  liberty. 

When  Luther  made  his  famous  stand  at  Worms 
for  the  rights  of  the  individual,  not  alone  liberty  of 
conscience,  but  of  the  human  reason,  not  alone  the 
liberty  of  organized  society,  but  personal  liberty, 
the  liberty  of  the  individual,  was  on  trial,  and  in- 
volved in  his  demand.  What  Luther  there  con- 
tended for  was  the  right  of  a  man,  made  in  the 


Americans  Debt  to  Luther  89 

image  of  God,  to  form  and  hold  his  own  opinions ; 
the  divine  prerogative  of  freedom  of  mind,  thought 
and  soul;  that  churches  had  their  rights  and 
sphere ;  that  governments  had  their  legitimate  pow- 
ers ;  but  that  the  individual  also  had  his  rights,  his 
sphere  of  independent  action,  his  domain  of  liberty, 
and  that  within  this  sacred  arcanum  no  scepter  of 
pontiff,  and  no  sword  of  monarch,  dare  enter  on 
pain  of  the  fiat  of  Almighty  God. 

America,  then,  in  her  separation  of  Church  and 
State,  and  in  her  government  by  all  the  people,  and 
for  all  the  people — a  true  democracy — has  profited 
far  more  largely  by  Luther  than  any  modern  na- 
tion. We  are  the  heirs  of  his  battles  and  victories 
and  sacrifices,  we  share  in  the  liberties  he  achieved, 
we  illustrate  in  practice  the  thoughts  he  originated, 
as  does  no  other  people.  America's  debt  to  Luther 
is  one  that  every  man,  woman  and  child  of  her 
teeming  millions  should  acknowledge— a  debt  that 
it  would  be  as  powerless  to  compute  in  dollars  and 
cents  as  it  would  be  to  catch  and  number  the  drops 
of  Niagara,  as  its  mighty  volume  of  waters  plunges 
over  the  cataract.  But  a  debt  it  is  at  least,  that 
should  never  be  forgotten,  and  for  which  we,  and 
the  generations  that  shall  come  after,  and  enjoy  the 
blessings  of  this  favoured  land,  should  not  cease  to 
be  grateful. 

This  obligation  has  been  expressed  by  Daniel 
Webster,  America's  philosopher  statesman,  thus : 
"  The  Eef ormation  of  Luther  broke  out,  kindling 
up  the  minds  of  men  afresh,  leading  to  new  habits 


go  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

of  thought,  and  awakening  in  individuals  energies 
before  unknown  even  to  themselves.  The  religious 
controversies  of  this  period  changed  society  as  well 
as  religion,  and  to  a  considerable  extent,  where  they 
did  not  change  the  religion  of  the  State,  they 
changed  man  himself  in  his  modes  of  thought,  his 
consciousness  of  his  own  powers,  and  his  desire  of 
intellectual  attainment.  The  spirit  of  commercial 
and  foreign  adventure  on  the  one  hand  and,  on  the 
other,  the  assertion  and  maintenance  of  religious 
liberty,  having  their  source  in  the  Reformation,  and 
this  love  of  religious  liberty  drawing  after  it  or 
bringing  along  with  it,  as  it  always  does,  an  ardent 
devotion  to  the  principle  of  civil  liberty  also,  were 
the  powerful  influences  under  which  character  was 
formed  and  men  trained  for  the  great  work  of  in- 
troducing English  civilization,  English  law,  and, 
what  is  more  than  all,  Anglo-Saxon  blood,  into  the 
wilderness  of  iJ^orth  America." 


xm 

THE  HEEO  OF  UOTYEESAL  PEOTESTANTISM 

LUTHER  was  a  man  for  the  whole  world. 
While  he  was  a  German  of  the  Germans, 
this  was  only  because  he  realized  most 
powerfully  the  genius  of  his  environment.  He 
saw  life  acutely,  and  he  saw  it  whole.  The  great 
truth  he  brought  to  light  had  in  it  nothing 
peculiar  to  the  German  spirit.  In  it  he  grasped 
an  original  and  universal  Christian  idea,  quite  be- 
yond all  race  limitations.  Thus,  Luther  as  a 
thinker  is  not  a  German  type,  but  "  a  man  by  him- 
self "  who  belongs  to  no  age  exclusively,  and  who, 
therefore,  is  a  genius  in  the  classic  sense  of  the 
term,  a  man  who,  as  a  productive  force,  exerted  a 
most  powerful  influence  not  alone  on  the  contem- 
porary, but  also  on  the  latter  age.  He  has  thus 
been  claimed  by  all  schools  of  thought.  The  great 
scientific  dogmaticians  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
who  constructed  so  imposing  an  orthodox  theology, 
in  a  strong  sense,  truly  represented  him,  but  the 
Pietists  of  the  eighteenth  century,  who  directly  op- 
posed these  stiff  theological  codes,  really  were 
nearer  to  his  inner  spirit.  Their  great  leader, 
Spener,  placed  Luther's  writings  next  to  the  Bible 
as  a  means  of  devotion.  The  Humanists  and  the 
Kationalists  admired  him  as  the  author  of  freedom 

91 


92  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

of  thought.  Calvin  signed  the  Augsburg  Confes- 
sion, and  called  Luther  the  most  distinguished 
teacher  of  God  since  the  apostles,  so  that  the  Pres- 
byterians have  a  part  in  him.  The  Church  of  Eng- 
land almost  became  Lutheran  and  in  its  translation 
of  the  Bible,  in  the  Thirty -nine  Articles, — the  ma- 
jority of  which  are  taken  bodily  from  the  Augsburg 
Confession, — and  in  the  liturgic  forms  and  offices 
of  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer,  show  Luther's 
hand,  so  that  it  is  richly  entitled  to  share  in  his 
honour.  Wesley  ascribed  his  conversion  to  Luther's 
wonderfully  spiritual  preface  to  Komans,  so  that 
the  Methodist  Church  feels  his  influence  in  her 
foundation.  "  As  Paul  converted  Luther,  so  Luther 
converted  Wesley.  It  was  Luther's  preface  to 
Eomans  that  turned  Wesley  from  a  servant  to  a 
son,  from  a  pious  churchman  and  model  clergyman 
to  a  burning  apostle,  with  a  world  for  his  parish, 
and  a  mind  much  more  free  and  liberal  than  many 
of  his  followers  realize."  ^  And  even  the  Eoman 
Catholics  in  the  Council  of  Trent  introduced  many 
of  the  reforms  he  stood  for.  No  one  communion 
then  expresses  exhaustively  the  Christianity  of 
Luther  or  can  claim  him  exclusively.  Great  men, 
indeed,  live  for  all  mankind.  The  vicarious  princi- 
ple is  shot  through  the  whole  web  of  nature.  The 
world's  progress  is  built  upon  the  hearts  of  a  few. 
Win  a  great  victory  for  the  right,  and  its  fruitage 
is  reaped  by  all  mankind.  Yoice  a  truth,  and  it 
will  resound  about  the  world.  So  was  it  with  Luther. 
*  Principal  Forsyth,  Hackney  College,  London. 


XIY 
LUTHER'S  GEO  WING  FAME 

LUTHER'S  fame,  unlike  that  of  other  per- 
sonalities, grows  brighter  with  the  lapse  of 
years.  The  more  he  is  studied  and  the 
keener  search-light  is  cast  upon  him  the  nobler  he 
appears.  More  biographies  have  appeared  of  him 
in  the  last  decade  than  in  any  like  preceding 
period,  and  he  is  more  largely  quoted  to-day,  and 
his  influence  is  more  deeply  felt  on  current  religious 
thought  than  ever.  The  personality  of  Luther  ap- 
pears to  be  the  most  unique,  myriad-featured  and 
powerful  in  history.  He  is  not  alone  the  author  of 
a  new  era  in  the  history  of  religion,  but  from  him 
dates  a  new  epoch  in  the  progress  of  civilization. 
Such  fruit  the  womb  of  time  bears  but  once  in 
thousands  of  years.  As  the  eminent  Unitarian 
thinker,  James  Freeman  Clarke,  put  it :  "  The 
character  of  Luther  had  a  mountainous  grandeur. 
When  near  Mont  Blanc  you  perceive  its  ragged 
precipices  and  shapeless  ravines,  but,  as  you  recede, 
it  towers  high  above  its  neighbouring  peaks  until 
its  features  are  softened  by  the  atmosphere  and 
melted  into  strange  tints  and  beautiful  shadows: 
and  it  stands  the  object  of  reverence  and  wonder, 
one  of  the  most  sublime  objects  in  nature  and 
marvellous  creations  of  God.    So  stands  Luther,  a 

93 


94  What  the  World  Owes  Luther 

hero,  growing  more  the  mark  of  reverence  through 
succeeding  centuries :  the  real  author  of  modern 
liberty  of  thought  and  action,  and  the  giant  founder 
of  modern  civilization  and  pure  religion." 

And  the  lesson  is  one  that  our  materialistic  age 
especially  should  note.  Luther  was  a  spiritual 
hero.  He  wielded  no  sword  but  the  weapon  of 
truth.  He  bore  no  scepter  but  the  authority  of 
the  Word  of  God.  He  had  for  his  only  ideal, 
religion :  his  only  aim,  the  good  of  men  and  the 
everlasting  welfare  of  the  soul.  And  because  he 
was  thus  a  warrior,  a  prince,  and  a  hero  of  the 
realm  of  spirit,  his  fame  is  set  upon  a  hill  that 
cannot  be  hid,  and  his  light  shines  like  a  mighty 
sea-mark  into  the  far  abyss  of  time. 

LUTHEE 
Star  after  star  in  radiant  grandeur  rose 
To  shame  the  midnight  of  the  soul  away  ! — 
But,  chief  o'er  all  the  galaxy  of  lights 
That  stud  the  firmament  of  Christian  fame, 
Shin'd  Luther  forth, — that  miracle  of  men  ! 
The  gospel  hero,  who  with  faith  sublime 
Fulmin'd  the  lightnings  of  God's  flaming  word 
Full  on  the  towers  of  superstition's  home, 
Till,  lo  !  they  crumbled  !  and  his  with' ring  flash 
Yet  sears  the  ruin  with  victorious  play. 

— Montgomery, 


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l2mo,  boards,  net  35c. 

A  plain,  unadorned  examination  of  the  historical  fact  of 
Our  Lord's  Resurrection,  of  its  indispensable  prominence  in 
the  faith  of  the  Christian  and  of  the  power  its  acceptance 
exercises  in  buttressing  his  belief  in  a  physical  resurrection 
from  the  dead,  and  the  attainment  of  life  eternal. 

A.  T.  ROBERTSON,  M.A.,  P.P. 

The  Divinity  of  Chri^  in  the  Gospel 

of  John        i2mo,  cloth,  net  $1.00. 

"A  fascinating  study  of  the  Gospel  of  John.  The  book  is 
not  a  full  commentary  on  the  Gospel,  but  an  effort  to  de- 
velop the  thesis  of  the  book  with  brevity  and  clearness,  so 
that  the  average  man  may  understand  the  book  better  as  a 
whole  in  detail." — Christian  Observer. 


''te«fSiiI!',«?JP?''^'  Seminary  Libraries 


1    1012  01245  0286 


